Women, Politics, Term Limits

I've always been a fan of mandatory retirement for elected officials as long as the retirement came after a significant period of time. I think 24 or 30 years is probably long enough for any politician to hold a job. Most limits on an elected official's term in office, however, are much shorter than that. The Washington Post on Monday had an interesting article that looked at states with term limits for state legislators and the number of women in the legislature.

Essentially what the article found was that states with term limits had fewer women in office while states without term limits had more women in office. Furthermore, states with term limits have seen the number of women in office decline since term-limits went into effect. According to the article:

Term limits are in effect in 15 states, in every region of the country. Created in the belief that they would make statehouses less hidebound and more representative, the rules remain a topic of considerable controversy, much of it about what effect the turnover has on legislative effectiveness.

In six states, term limits have been repealed by the legislature or killed by the courts.

Since 1995, the year before the first limits were imposed for state legislatures, the percentage of women in the legislatures has grown from 20.6 percent to 23.5 percent, an increase of 200 seats nationwide -- on average, four per state.

The overall increase in states with term limits, however, has been smaller than in states without. The number of women in the Michigan legislature, from the year before term limits were enacted to now, dropped from 34 to 29. Missouri went from 45 to 38, Ohio from 28 to 23 and Arizona from 32 to 31. In Florida, women held 38 seats in 2000 and 38 today.

A few states registered gains, notably California, where the number of female legislators climbed from 25 in 1995 to 34 today. Yet even in Sacramento, women occupy just 28 percent of statehouse seats.

What's questionable, however, is whether or not the term limits caused the decline or whether it is simply an interesting coincidence.

What I think is clear is that there has to be a strategy of promoting the candidacies of women if you want to increase their numbers in elective office. The Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota has been working on such a strategy for decades and the work has paid off.

My college friend, Margaret Anderson Kelliher was quoted in the Washington Post article about the strategy.

In Minnesota, a state without term limits, women have increased their numbers in the legislature from 50 to 70 since 1995, including a jump of 10 last year. House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher (D) credits two factors: the growing number of electable female candidates and the prominence of issues such as education and health care.

"There are more and more women who are serving on local school boards, running for city councils and winning, and creating a pipeline," Kelliher said. "The scholarly literature says it takes on average three times that a woman is asked to run for office for her to do it. My sense is we're maybe down to two times."

Like everything else in politics, success depends on hard work done over the long term. While term limits may serve to prematurely cut off promising political careers I'm not sure they should be blamed for a lack of women in elective office. Term limits simply make having a good pipeline very important.