Study finds 70 percent of Idaho state board, commission appointees are men

BOISE – New research by two Boise State University professors has identified major gender imbalance in the state’s appointed boards and commissions, showing not only that 70 percent of appointees are men, but that women are disproportionately appointed to boards with functions traditionally classified as “feminine,” including those related to children and families. The study, which was presented at the Women and Leadership Conference held last week by BSU’s Andrus Center for Public Policy, identified “evidence of gender sorting on board appointments.” Political science Professor Jaclyn Kettler, who conducted the research with fellow BSU political scientist Justin Vaughn, said, “It’s possible that it’s not necessarily a bias that they’re consciously doing. When they’re appointing someone to, say, a transportation commission, they just tend to think of certain people.” The seven-member Idaho Transportation Board currently includes two women. Women received 51.1 percent of appointments to state boards with functions classified as “feminine,” but only 15.8 percent of appointments to boards with functions classified as “masculine,” including commerce, finance, natural resources and more. Idaho Gov. Butch Otter had no comment on the new study. “The governor hasn’t seen or read the report,” said spokesman Jon Hanian, “and until he does we don’t have any comment.” But the findings generated lots of talk at last week’s conference, and Sen. Cherie Buckner-Webb, D-Boise, is working on legislation to encourage gender balance in state board appointments. “What we’re asking is that they be considered,” Buckner-Webb said. “The goal is to get the best-qualified person for any position, the best-qualified person. And I think that we often miss the opportunity to include women in that equation. I think the way we’ll get the best is that we consider all, and not just men.” Eight states, including Montana and Utah, have laws requiring or encouraging gender balance in state board and commission appointments. Iowa was the first to pass such a law in 1987; it strictly requires gender balance on all boards. Montana’s law, passed in 1993, urges gender balance “to the greatest extent possible,” and Utah’s, which passed in 1992, requires appointments to “strongly consider” gender balance. Buckner-Webb, who said she’s still finalizing her proposed legislation, said it won’t be a mandate or quota. But she said the current makeup of boards is “not reflective of what the demographics are in Idaho. We have some amazing, phenomenal women. We have women that are capable and competent and have much to offer in almost any endeavor you can imagine.” According to the U.S. Census, 49.9 percent of Idahoans are female. Kettler said it’s not clear how the Idaho figures compare to other states, “because there’s just not a lot of research on this, and the information is kind of hard to find.” Idaho ranks fairly well against other states for its proportion of female elected officials. Women hold 27.6 percent of state legislative seats, above the national average of 24.3 percent and ranking 17th among states. However, there currently are no women on Idaho’s Supreme Court or in its four-member congressional delegation, and just one of seven statewide elected officials is female, state schools Superintendent Sherri Ybarra. Kettler said the researchers actually were surprised that the proportion of women board members and commissioners was as high as it was, as it exceeds the percentage of elected state legislators. “We were probably a little more cynical,” she said. The study, which examined nearly 5,000 appointments in Idaho at the state, county and city level, found a consistent pattern. “At the state level, 30.8 percent of appointees were women, compared to 69.2 percent for men,” the resesarchers reported. At the county level, 34.4 percent of appointees were women, while 65.5 percent were men. At Idaho cities, 38.3 percent of appointments went to women, while men received 61.7 percent. The researchers drew on existing scholarly studies of gender and bureaucracy to classify each board or commission as feminine, masculine or neutral. Those tagged as feminine included boards related to stereotypically feminine roles, including children and family, education, arts and culture, and community affairs. Boards tagged as masculine were those related to stereotypically masculine endeavors, including agriculture, construction, natural resources, commerce, finance, and science and technology. Boards that deal with issues including housing, planning and regulation were classified as neutral. Kettler said the researchers plan to continue their project, to track trends over time among state appointments, and also to examine appointments in other states to compare that data with Idaho’s.