Since 2012, the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics has been tracking the gender composition of county and municipal boards in Iowa as part of its Gender Balance Project.
The project began in 2012 after legislation requiring gender balance on all state-level appointed boards and commissions in Iowa was extended to include county and municipal boards and commissions. Initially implemented to understand the extent to which gender balance was being achieved on county and city boards over time, the project now tracks any effects of the 2024 repeal of the legislation.
State boards are now being added to the Gender Balance Project.
“State level boards and commissions carry out many important policy and licensing functions,” said Karen M. Kedrowski, Catt Center director. “Adding these bodies to the Gender Balance Project will yield important information for advocates and policy makers alike.”
Last fall, undergraduate student intern Em Mach began gathering data and presenting preliminary results.
Mach compiled a list of the more than 200 active state boards and commissions in Iowa. The boards and commissions range in size from three to 10 members, not counting several interstate compacts for which Iowa sends only one representative.
Data collected for each member includes gender, political party, term start and end dates, and what county they reside in, and was collected from three sources – the Iowa Talent Bank website, Iowa legislative online records, and websites of the boards and commissions – as well as through emails and phone calls.
Mach said that one thing that she noticed about the data so far is the number of boards that are currently gender balanced.
“More boards are balanced than I expected there to be, with the number of balanced boards sitting at around 50%,” Mach said. “Also, some boards that are unbalanced are primarily or exclusively women,” with those boards often found in fields such as barbering and cosmetology, arts and sciences, interior design, and health care.
When asked to speculate on the impact of the repeal of the gender balance law, Kedrowski said, “I expect a residual effect from the gender balance law, as current members complete their terms. Over time, I expect that the number of gender balanced boards will decline gradually. However, keep in mind that this could well mean that some boards will be majority female.”
Another thing that Mach found interesting about the data is which counties board members live in.
“Unsurprisingly, Polk County is the highest represented, with 54 board or commission members out of the 214 that I’ve looked at so far,” she said. The next four counties, in order of the number of board members, are Johnson, Dallas, Linn, and Story.
With some boards meeting every month, Mach said, travel time can be prohibitive for a lot of people, particularly in winter months. In addition to factoring in the distance from Des Moines, Mach also said it would be interesting to analyze per capita membership by county as well as the composition of boards that meet only once or twice a year, making service on those boards more accessible to people who live further away from Des Moines.
A preliminary report focusing predominantly on boards and commissions within the state’s Department of Inspections, Appeals, and Licensing will soon be available on the Catt Center website.