Women politicians keep narrowing the gap

Utah Sen. Deidre Henderson, R-Spanish Fork | Lee Benson, Deseret News

SALT LAKE CITY — The 2019 elections are Tuesday, and among the myriad of things yet to be decided, we already know this: Salt Lake City will have a new mayor, and it will be a woman. Still. Either Luz Escamilla or Erin Mendenhall will replace Jackie Biskupski, who decided not to run for reelection.

A woman mayor is hardly news anymore, of course. Cities all over America are run by women. Of the 1,366 municipalities in the country with a population over 30,000, 300 have women mayors, or 22%. The percentage is even higher in America’s 100 largest cities, 27 of which have female mayors.

Across the political spectrum, it’s a similar story. In the 116th Congress, the one currently in session, out of 541 representatives and senators, 131 are women, or 24%. Here in the Utah Legislature, 25 of the 104 legislators are women, also 24%.

Both figures represent all-time highs, and no one expects the trend to slow down. Half of all the females who have served in the legislatures in both Utah and the nation have been elected in just the past 20 years.

One of them is Deidre Henderson, of Spanish Fork, who was first elected to the Utah Senate in 2012, won again in 2016, and plans to try for a third term next year.

Henderson first got involved in politics in 2008 when she was invited to attend a campaign organization meeting for a man she’d never heard of named Jason Chaffetz, who wanted to run for the U.S. Congress. Deidre’s grandmother, who knew how much her granddaughter loved to talk about politics, set up the invitation. Grandma was clueless as to the storm she was about to unleash. So was Deidre.

“I had no idea what was in store for me when I volunteered to make a few phone calls,” she laughs. “If I’d known what that year was going to entail for me I never would have done it. So I’m glad I didn’t know. Because he (Chaffetz) didn’t have any money to pay people, he was able to give experience to people like me.”

Chaffetz got elected; she got hooked.

At the time, the last of Henderson’s five children had just entered pre-school.

“I’d spent 13 years doing nothing but wiping noses and bottoms,” she reflects. “And I loved that phase of my life. But as my children got older, I thought it was kind of pointless for me to just rattle around the house all day.”

When the Senate seat in her district opened up in 2012, she went for it, first winning the Republican nomination and then prevailing in the general election when she ran unopposed. In 2016 she won reelection with 84% of the vote.

In each instance, she had to defeat male opponents. But gender, she reports, was never much of a factor.

“I’m not going to say there haven’t been issues,” she says. “But I’m happy to say it hasn’t been as big of an issue as I initially thought it might be. I expected more pushback, I thought I’d encounter more sexism than I did, and I was surprised.”

Joining the male majority in the Legislature hasn’t been oppressive, either.

“I expected that maybe I’d get kind of a pat on the head and put in a corner,” she says, “and that didn’t happen. They’ve (the men) never treated me like, ‘Oh, we can’t go grab lunch with you.’ They’ve been really good to work with. Overall it’s been a good experience.”

Not that the equality picture couldn’t improve. In the Republican Party, in particular. Henderson points out that there have been just nine Republican women senators in the 123 years that Utah has been a state. She was No. 8. Of the six women who are currently state senators, four are Democrats — out of six Democrats total. Of the 23 GOP senators, Henderson and Ann Millner are the only women.

“There are more Republican senators named Dan than there are women,” says Henderson. “Three Dans, two women; and I love all the Dans, they’re all great, but it is a stark reality.”

Still, the horizon looks bright. In 2020, Henderson will lead the delegation that will take a statue of Martha Hughes Cannon to Washington, D.C. to be placed in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol. The event will be part of the yearlong celebration of the 100-year anniversary of the passing of the 19th Amendment granting all U.S. women the right to vote.

Way back in 1897, Martha Cannon of Utah was the first woman to be seated as a state senator in American history.

“We started out with a bang,” says Henderson. “We’re not quite there yet, but we’re getting there.”

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