DES MOINES, Iowa (CN) — Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed bill on Wednesday rolling back a nearly 40-year-old statute that required state and local boards and commissions to be equally balanced between men and women.
The original law requiring gender-balance on state boards and commissions was passed in 1987 — when those bodies were typically dominated by men. It was amended in 2009 to include local boards and commissions when Reynolds was a state senator. She voted against the bill at the time.
"I believed then as I still do now that our focus should always be on appointing the most qualified people," the Republican governor said at a bill-signing ceremony in the governor’s office in the Iowa Capitol. "And that includes engaged citizens with a genuine interest in serving their state or local government, as well as individuals with valuable experience that directly relate to that position."
Advocates of repealing the gender-balance requirement argued the law is no longer necessary as more women have entered the workplace, and they say the law had become a hindrance to finding qualified candidates for boards and commissions.
When the bill was being debated in February, state Representative Jane Bloomingdale, a Northwood, Iowa, Republican, called the gender balance requirement "antiquated" and "unnecessary," according to the Des Moines Register.
"Gender balance often causes us to eliminate some of the most qualified candidates, and that’s the last thing we want to do," she said. "We want the most qualified candidates to fill positions on our boards, commissions and councils."
Critics of the bill point out, however, that the law allowed exceptions for appointments when it was impossible to achieve an equal balance of men and women.
Democrats, who voted as a bloc against the bill in the House, argued that eliminating the requirement would take the state backwards, the Register reported.
"To attain equality, those who have the power must share it," said state Representative Beth Wessel-Kroeschell, a Democrat from Ames. "However, those who have the power struggle to give it up. Without mandating gender-balanced boards, we do not make progress in creating them."
The gender-balance requirement had already been eliminated for the state commission that nominates candidates for Iowa’s appellate courts in January after U.S. District Judge Stephanie Rose struck down the gender-balance requirement for lawyers elected to the State Judicial Nominating Commission.
Rose found then the state failed to demonstrate that the barriers to women being elected to the commission are as high as when the statute was enacted in 1987, when far fewer women were practicing law in Iowa.
“Put simply, defendant did not sufficiently establish that the remedial measure is currently necessary in Iowa to remedy past discrimination that prohibited all women from election to the commission,” she wrote. “This is not to say that gender discrimination does not exist — it plainly does across the spectrum of jobs in this country — but the evidence presented to the court does not establish this fact in this commission, in this state, at this time.”
Connie Ryan — president of the board of directors of Justice Not Politics, a judicial independence advocacy group that supports the gender-balance requirement — told Courthouse News Service at the time her group was disappointed in the ruling.
“Things have changed, but it can be argued that is because of the law,” Ryan said, likening the situation to one of a person taking medicine that makes them feel better, with the symptoms returning when they stop taking the medication.
“If we remove this law, what are the consequences?” she asked. “There is not equality in our society.”
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