Colorado and Montana Talk Politics

There've been a number of recent articles about women serving in the state legislatures and in leadership positions in state government in Colorado and Montana.

Using data from the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) (info also available from the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers), Colorado ranks first in the nation, with women serving as 40% of its state legislators after the 2008 election. This is in spite of a decline in the number of Republican women serving - the Democratic women made up for it. They now outnumber Democratic men in the Senate and are half of the D's in the House. (Ohio has seen a similar trend with its Republican women - see our graph).

Montana is reporting on the record number of women serving in leadership roles in their state legislature. One Montana news source notes:

• "There are a record number of women serving in leadership roles this time, including the top three Democrats in the Senate, along with three out of five Democratic leaders in the House. And it's not just Democrats. Every Republican woman in the House of Representatives is either heading a committee, serving as a committee co-chair or in some kind of leadership position."

How do we fare in Ohio? The good news (I guess) is that we're no longer in the bottom 10 states for the percentage of seats held by women - based on NCSL data from after the past election, Ohio now ranks 34th (from high to low) among the 50 states.