Just 24% of Utah legislative candidates are women

There are only 17 women in the Utah legislature, 12 in the house and 5 in the senate. That means only 16.3%  of legislators in Utah are women. Of the 17 female legislators, 8 are Democrats and only 5 are Republicans.

Why does Utah elect so few women? And why are Republican districts dominated by men? It’s at least partly due to the fact that women aren’t running for office.Of the 253 candidates who filed for Utah House or Senate, only 58 were women. That’s less than 23%.Of the 58 female candidates, 17 were Republican.  So less than 7% of all legislative candidates were Republican women.

5 of the 58 female candidates withdrew after filing, 8 were defeated at their party convention, and 1 was defeated in a primary. That leaves 44 women on the ballot for the general election with 138 men. That means 24% of general election candidates are female. Women fared slightly better than men in party conventions and primaries.

It’s hard to draw any conclusions from this limited data, but I will hypothesize that in order for there to be more women in the legislature, more will need to run.