Come February, Nevada will be the first state to have a legislature where women hold the majority of seats after two women were appointed yesterday to recently vacated state Assembly seats.
Commissioners in Clark County, Nevada, on Tuesday appointed Rochelle Nguyen and Beatrice Angela Duran to replace former Assembly members Chris Brooks and Olivia Diaz.
Women will now hold 23 of 42 seats in the state Assembly and nine of the state Senate’s 21 spots, giving them 32 of the 63 total seats in the Legislature.
Nguyen and Duran, both of whom are Democrats, were appointed with unanimous support.
Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Vermont and Washington have among the highest proportions of women in their respective state legislatures.
The appointments in Nevada come weeks after women in Nevada scored big in November’s midterm elections, including in statewide races.
The state’s congressional delegation is also now majority-women after Sen.-elect Jacky Rosen (D) and Rep.-elect Susie Lee (D) won their respective races in the midterm elections.
Nevada will also now have a state Supreme Court with a majority of women justices after a string of victories in November.
No state has previously had a female-majority or even a 50 percent-female Legislature, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, which tracks women’s political representation.
“It is unprecedented at this point to see a majority female legislature overall,” said Kelly Dittmar, an assistant professor of political science at Rutgers-Camden.
With the two Nevada appointments, women will make up 28.6 percent of state legislators nationwide when new legislators are sworn into office in 2019.
Studies of women who have served in Congress are probably comparable to female gains in state legislatures, she said, and the studies have found that “the more women you have in the body, the more that their perspectives and life experiences are integrated into policy debates and deliberations.”
Dittmar said the milestone in Nevada could help change attitudes of what a state Legislature should look like.
“That might influence young people. It might influence other women to see that body as both friendlier to them as well as more responsive to their concerns,” she said.