Politically, women gaining faster in Congress than on state level
by Deborah Barfield Berry - Shreveport Times (excerpt)

WASHINGTON — The number of women in Congress has reached an all-time high, and a woman is running for the nation's highest office. But those gains aren't reflected at the state level, where the percentage of women in legislative bodies has leveled off the past decade.

Nationally, the percentage of women serving in state legislatures jumped from about 5 percent in 1971 to about 21 percent in 1993, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Since then, it's risen only slightly — to about 24 percent this year.

"It's like a glacial movement," said Karen O'Connor, director of the Women and Politics Institute at American University.

State legislatures have long been considered a training ground for politicians with ambitions to serve in Congress or some other statewide elected position.

In Louisiana, there are 21 women among 144 legislators. Women represented 17 percent of the Legislature in 2005, compared to 3.5 percent, or five women legislators out of 144 legislators, in 1984.

"I think numbers are down a little bit, and part of that is because we lost a number of women who were term-limited," said state Sen. Lydia Jackson, D-Shreveport. "We picked up some women in some other seats, but it was a net loss of about three or four."