 Michelle Stennett regales Wendy Jaquet and Angenie McCleary with tales of being a woman in the Idaho Senate at a Ketchum coffee shop.
Photo by Roland Lane
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Four of Idaho's female politicians discuss the pluses and pitfalls of being a woman in politics.
Idaho politics have traditionally been dominated by males, but women are increasingly breaking through to join that club.
Reps. Wendy Jaquet, D-Ketchum, and Donna Pence, D-Gooding, daily enter a room where they are two of 20 women in the 70-member Idaho House of Representatives. Sen. Michelle Stennett, D-Ketchum, is one of nine women in the 35-member Senate.
These bodies have made significant strides in including women; in 1982, only 10 of 105 legislators were female. By 1992, 36 of 126 legislators were female, but 2011 marked the first session that all elected lawmakers from District 25, which includes Blaine, Lincoln, Camas and Gooding counties, were women. Jaquet, Pence, Stennett and Angenie McCleary (chair of the Blaine County Board of County Commissioners) sat down with Valley Woman to discuss respect, gender roles and balancing convictions with peacemaking while serving in a male-dominated political arena.
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In a way, it feels demeaning to even ask these powerful women if they struggle in what has been a male-dominated field. Jaquet has been in the Legislature since 1994, and ran the Sun Valley-Ketchum Chamber & Visitors Bureau before that. Stennett shone in her first elected session last year as Senate minority caucus chair, Pence is finishing her third term in the House and when McCleary was first appointed to fill a vacancy, she was the youngest county commissioner in the state. She is now chair.
"I'm not sure I even want to acknowledge that it's difficult," McCleary said. "Even internally, it's kind of this circular thing where I'm not even sure I want to admit that people treat me differently."
At the same time, though, the four agreed that sometimes it's a struggle to get the respect they feel they deserve.
"I've had a legislator's wife tell me that she says to him every morning over breakfast, 'Now, you be nice to Wendy today,'" Jaquet said. "It's sweet, but she has obviously figured out that maybe the men are not as nice as they should be."
Stennett said that when she first became minority caucus chair in 2011, she worried about trying to establish her authority in a caucus full of men.
"When I sit down with the governor and I'm with the [state] leadership, often I'm the only woman in the room," she said. "I thought that in dealing with them, they would try to put the 'little lady' in her place. But I feel that they've been very respectful."
The women said that being the only woman in a room full of men brings different dynamics than when there is more of a balance between genders. They said men tend to be more aggressive, and professionalism can be thrown out the window when the gentlemen in the room form a "pack mentality."
McCleary remembered one instance when she was in a small-group meeting with local leaders and county staff on a controversial issue and the men began grilling her mercilessly.
"I got very upset," she said, even to the point of having to leave the room. "The vibe gets really disrespectful, and I feel like the men in the room kind of build on each other. It gets to a point where it's not the behavior that I would hope a group of adults would display."
In the Senate, Stennett said, it's harder to simply abandon professionalism. Senate hearings are governed by strict rules, which provides a certain courtesy and structure.
"It makes people slow down and be courteous," Stennett said. "I feel like they've been really respectful."
But in leadership positions where the rules are not as established, such as chair of the Board of County Commissioners, establishing one's role can be more difficult. McCleary said she had to work much harder to establish her role as chair than she might have had to do as a man.
"Moving to being the chair was one of the hardest things I've done in this job," she said. "The first six months, I had to do so much just to establish how I wanted to be treated."
She wasn't sure if that was because she was a woman, young or simply inherently non-combative, but the struggle was so obvious that members of the public began stepping up in support, telling her not to give up or cave in to other members of the commission.
While that support helped a little bit, she felt that sometimes the support came across as back-handed.
"Sometimes, [expression] of that support can be some of the times that I question their motives," she said. "How do they see me as a female if they felt like they had to make that comment? Sometimes, that's what it is—'Oh, I didn't know that a young female could do that'—but maybe they are just trying to work through their own previous misconceptions."
'Speak your truth'
All four women agreed that balancing the need to stand up and earn respect while fighting the stereotype of an overly aggressive woman can be difficult. Women often have a different approach from men when dealing with sensitive topics—but that doesn't mean it's weaker.
"Women bring a different strength to politics," Stennett said. "The way we should approach it is not to try and be like the guys. You bring a sort of softness to it, but you can be firm."
Jaquet and Pence said that women tend to be the compromisers, the ones to look to the middle rather than the extremes of an issue in order to find a solution.
"We're peacemakers," Pence said. "We help people get along. Males are naturally more aggressive, and that's the way they accomplish things."
McCleary said that though her natural tendency is to avoid conflict, she does find herself in situations where avoidance is not an option. But that doesn't mean she suddenly becomes overly aggressive, she said.
"I don't think that you need to be a bully to be effective. You don't have to throw a fit, you don't have to have a tantrum, you can be composed and stand your ground. I don't want to become this overly aggressive female because I feel that's the only way I can get something done."
Stennett agreed, saying that her strength lies in knowing what her core, unshakable beliefs are and staying true to them, no matter the issue.
"You just keep trying to speak your truth," she said. "People intuitively know if you're bullshitting them or trying to shoot straight."
Jaquet and Pence said that sometimes, the threat of political retribution can and does keep women from speaking out on issues such as abortion or women's health.
"Abortion bills have always been brought by men," Jaquet said. "The women you would think would stand up don't, because men seem to be dominant. If you are a woman and you want to keep your chairmanship—even if you are a man and you want to keep your chairmanship—you have to vote with the team."
"They may feel [the bill is wrong], but they don't feel that they can stand up," Pence added.
Gender bias
Another challenge the women feel is unique to their sex is age. Age appears to play a much larger role when it is a woman, rather than a man, in a leadership position.
"More than with men, age comes into it," McCleary said. "You're either too old for the job, you're too young for the job or you're at an age where you are going to have a family, so they wonder what your level of involvement will be."
Jaquet agreed, laughing, and added that she was worried about her then-pending election to the Ketchum-Sun Valley Marketing Alliance board—she worried she was too old, she said.
She also recounted a story about a fellow female legislator who was lambasted by her peers for leaving young children at home with their father for three to four months a year. It seemed unfair, she said, especially because the father was a teacher, and was able to leave work and be home when the children were there.
"[The male legislators] could not understand that her husband might be filling part of that role," she said.
"Probably because they would never think about doing it!" Pence joked.
Switching gender roles does cause some confusion and judgment on all levels of government, McCleary argued. Her husband does not attend many political functions with her—she says she notices that Jaquet receives more comments about this than she does.
"There's pressure to 'look right,'" she said. "People just don't know what to do when you switch those roles around. I don't really need my husband standing beside me and shaking hands."
Jaquet and Pence said that their husbands, Jim and Lew, don't really attend functions with them either. Again, while they don't seem to mind, both women said they get comments—mostly from legislator's wives—that it's strange their husbands don't come.
Interactions with the wives of male peers can sometimes be trickier than working with the men, the women agreed. McCleary said perhaps some of the difficulty she finds is part of the age conundrum, but that she definitely feels a bit strange when dealing with the wives of county commissioners statewide.
"It's the wives who make stranger comments to me about how this isn't an appropriate thing I was doing," she said. "They would ask if I had kids, when I was going to have kids—"
"—it's like, when are you going to get on with your life?" Jaquet interrupted with a laugh. She added that normally, the women who make these comments either wish they had taken on a legislative role or they simply value more traditional gender roles.
Even among peers, there is not an instant solidarity, the women agreed, citing an example of a female Republican anti-abortion lobbyist.
"You are not immediately going to attach to anyone," Stennett said. "There is a different kind of relationship with women, though, just because we know that we are fighting the fight in a man's world."
Words of Wisdom
For young women who are thinking about going into politics, the women suggested taking on a female political mentor—Jaquet suggested McCleary, while the other women pointed out that Jaquet has done an extraordinary amount of mentoring herself.
McCleary said that sometimes it can be discouraging to be a 'young female' in politics, but she has fought through the comments and plans on running again for county commissioner in November. She said she had thought about running for the legislature, but was discouraged by male county commissioners in the state who felt the legislature, especially the House, was too conservative.
"Their comment to me was, 'As a young female, you'll never get anything done,'" she said.
But Stennett said that being a productive woman in the state Legislature is possible, if women simply play to their own strengths.
"We tend to be better listeners," she said. "You can say absolutely nothing and have that person walk away saying, 'She was such a great person to talk to.' It goes a long way toward making people feel comfortable."
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Stennett, Pence and McCleary are all running for re-election in November. Stennett is unopposed, but both Pence and McCleary will be facing men in the general election, and two men will compete over the seat Jaquet is retiting from.
