SALT LAKE CITY — Politics has been a hot topic nationally and locally over the past few weeks. From daily updates on Utah's Capitol Hill to executive orders in Washington D.C. A new study on women's status in Utah politics sparked our interest, so we worked to find out more.
WalletHub recently ranked Utah as the 4th best state to live in. While the Beehive State scored above average on many metrics it lags in one area, gender equity. That includes the presence of women in elected positions.
The Utah State University Utah Women and Leadership Project (UWLP), began reporting on the status of women in politics in 2014, which updates in 2017, and yearly since 2021.
According to the UWLP, 16.7% of the Utah delegation to Congress is female. That is lower than the 28.4% of women in Congress nationally. In the state legislature, 29.8% of members are women. Nationally that number sits at 34.4%.
FOX 13 News spoke with the founding director of the Utah Women and Leadership Project, Susan Madsen. She says that until men and women are represented in equal numbers important local issues will go unchanged. "We know there's a big difference between men and women we know from the research that we care about certain policies in different ways our priorities are different so when you don't have more equal numbers of men and women in the legislature in our Congress delegation and city councils whatever it might be you really do not represent the population the way it needs to be represented," Madsen stated.
There are places where representation numbers are increasing in the state of Utah. Forty percent of Utah statewide executive office seats are held by women. Nationally that number is only 31.6%.
Women also hold the majority of elected positions of auditor, clerk, recorder, and treasurer. Three out of the four largest Utah cities also are represented by women as mayors.
