Founding Director of the Utah Women and Leadership Project at Utah State University Susan Madsen said UWLP didn’t originally plan to release a 2022 update on the status of women in Utah politics.
“There's been so much interest and some momentum that we really had so many requests, we needed to do another one,” Madsen said.
The policy brief concluded that Utah has made the most progress at the local level with mayors; however, Utah still lacks representation at the federal level, and although state legislature representation has improved since 2021, Utah is still behind.
“The nation has gone up. Utah's gone up. We continue to go up, but the nation continues to go up faster than Utah,” Madsen said “So it's good that we have more representation, but we're still below the national average.”
Madsen said it’s important to include women in political positions because their priorities tend to be different than men’s.
“When you look at the research around state legislatures in the United States, those that include more women tend to allocate funding differently than states that have less women,” Madsen said.
Women put more money toward education, healthcare, social policies, and domestic violence, said Madsen. Especially during the current legislative session, Madsen said it’s important that everyone work together to help with these issues.
“Male allies are stepping forward to help because they understand there's so many benefits when you have both men and women stepping forward,” Madsen said.
Madsen said she feels good about the direction Utah is heading, but there is still more progress to be made.
