Iowa’s government boards no longer are required to have gender balance

DES MOINES — Government boards and commissions in Iowa no longer are required by state law to include an equal number of men and women, thanks to legislation signed into law Wednesday by Gov. Kim Reynolds.

Reynolds, the state’s first female governor, signed the legislation — which she proposed — during a ceremony in the governor’s formal office at the Iowa Capitol.

The law repeals the requirement that state and local boards and commissions be gender balanced, a requirement that’s been in place since 1988.

Iowa experts say repealing the state’s gender balance requirement likely will result in fewer women serving on government boards and commissions, especially at the local level.

Reynolds said as a state senator in 2009 she voted against an extension of the gender balance requirement for government boards and commissions because she believed it was unnecessary.

“I believed then, as I still do now, that our focus should always be on appointing the most qualified people,” Reynolds said at the bill-signing ceremony. “And that includes engaged citizens with a genuine interest in serving their state or local government, as well as individuals with valuable experience that directly relates to that position.”

The legislation, Senate File 2096, passed both chambers of the Iowa Legislature with only Republican support.

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Iowa Sen. Chris Cournoyer, a Republican from Le Claire, celebrated the progress of women in various public arenas and encouraged Iowa women to serve on government boards and commissions.

Cournoyer said it will be up to those bodies’ leaders to choose new members who are most qualified and best represent the occupation they govern.

“Our foremothers who fought hard over many, many years to get us a seat at the table, whether it was the right to vote, Title IX or countless other ways, are smiling today,” Cournoyer said. “They got us to the table, and it has been up to us to show that we belong there. And we have.”

The original requirement was proposed by then-Iowa Sen. Jean Lloyd-Jones, an Iowa City Democrat who went on to co-found the organization 50-50 in 2020, which sought to create gender balance in the Iowa Legislature by encouraging and helping more women seek election to the Statehouse.

That original proposal had broad, bipartisan support in the Iowa Legislature and was signed into law by then-Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican.

The numbers

According to research from the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University, 61 percent of county boards and commissions were gender balanced in 2022, and women held just 38 percent of seats and 26 percent of leadership positions.

Karen Kedrowski, director of the Catt Center, said research shows the state’s gender balance requirement did not produce a significant increase in the overall percentage of women serving on government boards, but did correlate with more widespread distribution of women on government boards.

“More boards are gender balanced, even as the total number of women serving has remained pretty much the same,” Kedrowski said during a recent appearance on Iowa PBS’ “Iowa Press.”

“This demonstrates that the gender balance law really did work and that it incentivized local governments to make the effort to find women to serve on boards that might have been overwhelmingly male, and to find men who would serve on boards that were traditionally overwhelmingly female.”

Kedrowski said she believes some local government leaders will continue to make an effort to keep boards gender balanced, but without the requirement, many will not.

“And I suspect though that what we will see is retrenchment, where there will be fewer boards that are gender balanced and potentially fewer women in leadership positions on those boards,” Kedrowski said.

Court ruling

Earlier this year, a federal judge ruled Iowa’s gender balance requirement for the state Judicial Nominating Commission — the panel that sends Reynolds recommendations for judicial nominations — is unconstitutional.

The organization that brought that lawsuit, Pacific Legal Foundation, celebrated Wednesday’s bill-signing, calling the repealed gender balance requirement “gender discrimination” and saying it created a hurdle that potential government board members had to clear before being considered based on their qualifications.

“The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law, and now Iowa’s laws fulfill that promise to board and commission applicants of either gender,” Kileen Lindgren, the legal policy manager at Pacific Legal Foundation, said in a statement.

The new law takes effect July 1.

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