Did Nonpartisan Redistricting Hurt Women in Iowa?
Center for Voting and Democracy
Redistricting
receives much attention for its impact on representation of racial
minorities and competitiveness of districts. However, most of these
discussions fail to discuss the impact of redistricting on women’s
representation in government. Full representation voting methods
without doubt would boost women more than any different method of
drawing districts, but data from Arizona and Iowa – the two leading
examples of states with nonpartisan, criteria-driven redistricting –
suggest that, at least under their current criteria, women may actually be hurt by nonpartisan redistricting.
Iowa
today is below the national median average on women in their state
legislature. Indeed Iowa has been behind the median in every election
since adopting nonpartisan redistricting going into 1982. However, before the 1982 election – the first after nonpartisan redistricting – Iowa was AHEAD of the national median;
in 1979 and 1981, the state was ranked 17th and 18th in the nation,
respectively. The percentage of Iowa women legislators decreased in
1982. In 1992, after the next redistricting, women again did relatively
poorly in Iowa – dropping from 32nd in the nation down to 37th. In
2002, after the 2001 redistricting, Iowa women lost four senate seats
and three house seats.
Meanwhile,
Arizona voters adopted their nonpartisan redistricting process in a
ballot measure in 2000 and it was used going into the 2002 elections.
The state went from being at the top of the national charts (ranking
either 2nd or 3rd after state elections in 1996, 1998 and 2000 – almost
certainly boosted by the state’s use of two-seat state assembly
districts) to 13th in 2002, when representation of women plunged by 8%.
These
numbers are not definitive about the impact of nonpartisan
redistricting on representation of women. But it does show that some
values – increased competition in election, for example – may not
address other values, such as fair representation. That balance without
doubt can be better provided by full representation voting methods.
For more statistics on representation of women in Iowa, see http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/Facts/StbySt/IA.html
Submitted by Jerry Depew of Laurens.
Blog For Iowa 