Arizona: Conservative Republicanism and Women’s Status

The state of Arizona is a traditionally Republican state. It is mainly rural and the majority of the people living there are white along with a fairly large Latino population and small African American, Asian, and Native American population. Arizona has the highest percentage of women in its legislature and has many diverse legislators but is also very conservative. I believe that having more women does not necessarily mean more legislation is being passed in favor of more progressive women’s rights issues because most of the women in the legislature are conservative or represent conservative constituents.

Arizona is historically a red or Republican state, having voted Republican every year since 1952, except in 1996 when they voted for Bill Clinton. Trump won in Arizona getting all 11 available electoral votes. The Republicans still have a majority with 35% of the population registered as Republican voters and 31% as Democratic voters. Nationwide, the majority of Republican candidates are white men and while Arizona’s elected members in the House of Representatives are mainly white men, there was a visible change after the 2018 elections. Arizona elected its first female senator, who is also the first Democratic senator in thirty years and the first openly bisexual member of Congress, Kyrsten Sinema. A Republican, Martha McSally was also elected to the Senate as junior senator after Sinema. In Arizona’s local legislature, 40% of their elected members are women, which is the highest in the United States. Also, when looked at by party, eight of the fourteen women in the Senate are Republican. Republicans historically do not elect as diverse groups of candidates as the Democrats because they do not participate in “identity politics” as the Democrats do. Identity politics is the belief that citizens should be represented by people that look like or identify in the same ways as the population they are representing because they can better understand their needs and experiences. Republicans have usually said that the best person for the job should be elected regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, or orientation. But as said before, most Republican candidates are white men. But Arizona is an exception here because there is such a high percentage of women in both parties. Also, the majority of the Democratic members of the state legislature are minorities. For example, there are five Native American legislators, three of which are women. They make up 5.5% of the legislation and 4% of the population. The population is 31% Latino and the legislature is 24% Latino. Also, the population is 4% African American and 3% of the legislature is African American. Despite being majorly Republican, Arizona has the most women in its legislature and a population closely ethnically represented by its representatives. This is probably because Democrats are campaigning more moderately in hopes of attracting more Republican as well as Democratic voters. Sinema campaigned as a moderate Republican because women are already considered to be more liberal than men so a Democratic woman would have been unsuccessful in a Republican state. Also, there has been a rise in Democratic voter registration in Arizona while Republican registration has remained mostly stagnant. The rise is not enough to swing the majority but if Republicans don’t vote in local elections because of the pattern that after a party wins a presidential victory they do not win as many local and state elections; the Democrats may have more voting power. But inclusivity is not unheard of in Arizona before 2018. In 2013 Kimberly Yee was a Republican member of the Arizona state Senate and became the first Asian American Woman to the Senate. She remained in office until 2016 and now serves as the Arizona State treasurer. She is another example of women getting elected by running as more moderate or conservative candidates and whether it’s because they truly believe in the platform or if it is a strategy because they cannot otherwise win is not clear.

Also, despite having the highest percentage of women on its state legislature, because of its more conservative ideals, Arizona has not passed much recent legislation in support of women’s rights. After Nevada ratified the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in 2017 and Illinois in 2018 it resurrected the issue of the ERA and all the questions that come along with it. It has been decades since its original introduction and eventual failure to pass Congress. Arizona is one of a few states that could be the thirty-eighth state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. There are currently thirty-seven states that have ratified the ERA and in order to become a federal amendment, it requires a two-thirds majority or thirty-eight states. State Rep. Pam Powers Hannley, D-Tucson, sponsored an ERA resolution before, but Republicans in House refused to allow debate. However, in January 2019, Hannley felt hopeful since the Democrats have taken more seats and there are new Republican candidates including a few moderate Republicans who have agreed to support the bill. Democrats have come very close to closing the majority gap in the House with 29-31 seats so they only need two Republican votes to get a majority. In the Senate, there is a 15-15 split so only one vote is needed to break the tie. Critics of the ERA claim the amendment is no longer needed because other federal laws already prohibit discrimination based on gender. One critic is Arizona state Senator Eddie Farnsworth, R-Gilbert, who chairs the powerful Judiciary Committee, where the ERA will likely be heard. '’If you have people that are paying less money based on gender, they are already breaking the law,’ Farnsworth said when the bill was debated last year. ‘Enforce the law.’ (Gardiner, Will Arizona be crucial...)”. If Farnsworth blocks the bill that could mean Democrats and ERA supporters must use a procedural move to try to force a floor debate. Farnsworth argued that the ERA could have unintended consequences and be used to remove Arizona’s abortion restrictions. ERA advocates say that the abortion argument is a distraction because the Supreme Court has established that the procedure is legal. Ugenti-Rita, an anti-abortion conservative Republican, said she was wary to take up the ERA fight because she knew it would lead to attacks from within her party. But she joined the cause anyway because she realized apprehensions about the ERA are misconceptions.

In March 2019, Democrats attempted to use a procedural move to bring an ERA resolution to a vote in the chamber and the vote was expected to be a toss-up but moderate Republicans who had previously supported the ERA voted against suspending Senate rules to allow a vote. After nearly two hours of debate, the Senate voted 16-13, to reject the move, likely killing any hope for ERA ratification for the third year in a row. Ugenti-Rita who was one of the Republicans who gave her support said the vote was about process, not the actual amendment. She said she doesn't support the idea of suspending rules to go around the chamber's committee hearing process. '’That was not a vote on policy,’ Ugenti-Rita said afterward. ‘That was a vote on a procedural motion.’ (Gardiner, Arizona won't make history)”. But the ERA never received a hearing because Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Eddie Farnsworth blocked it again just as he had the previous year when he chaired the House Judiciary Committee. Farnsworth argued on the Senate floor the day of the debate that the ERA is unnecessary because federal law already prohibits discrimination based on sex. Farnsworth “drew groans from some women in the crowd when he said he doesn't apologize for saying the world is a better place because of women's ‘softness’ and ‘femininity.’” Although, he never explained exactly how the ERA would reduce women’s femininity but continuously cited how the ERA was used in other states to remove abortion restrictions. Farnsworth continued, “’ Women are sacred. I can’t imagine what a horrible world this would be if it was just made up of men.’ (Gardiner, Arizona won't make history)”. The ERA has been blocked for three years because of Arizona’s conservatism, but it is also continually being brought up over and over by a rising Democratic party. If the current political trends continue it's possible Democrats may outnumber Republicans in the legislature or another state may ratify the ERA and then the federal debate would begin on how to proceed considering how long it has been since the bill's introduction. Also, even though there are many women in the state legislature they are conservative women so they will support conservative bills. Even when they do support bills like the ERA, they do it at risk to their careers, like Ugenti-Rita. She remained conservative on issues like abortion, but she supported the ERA until it became clear that her party and constituents were not happy. So, she may have wanted to support women’s issues but being conservative was more important to her and her constituents.

Another example of a policy that does not support women is a new bill passed in January 2019. This bill, introduced by Republican State Senator Nancy Barto, requires all women seeking an abortion in the state of Arizona to state a reason why. The law also requires doctors to ask the patients for their age, race, educational background, and marital status. Pro-life groups say the new questions will provide policymakers with more data. Pro-choice groups say the bill aims to make the process more cumbersome and seeks to discourage women from getting abortions. This is highly political and controversial considering how many women seek abortions as a result of rape or sexual assault and prefer to keep their reasons and information private. While women do have a right to decline to give a reason for the abortion, this information is not common knowledge. Members of Arizona’s Planned Parenthood have opposed the bill since it was introduced and believe it is designed to intimidate women and keep them from having abortions. Governor Ducey said in a written statement, “Arizona's enhanced reporting law had not been reviewed and updated for several years so it was overdue… We added critical protections for women who are victims of sex trafficking. These women are often coerced into having abortions by their captors, so ensuring they have an escape avenue when they come to an abortion clinic is an important provision in the bill'. Pro-choice groups argue that the questions are unnecessary because abortion data is already collected and published by the Arizona Department of Health every year and that doctors are already required to offer resources to women who are victims of sexual assault and domestic violence and women are less likely to give that information before an abortion because they are uncomfortable and having it in the new bill is not helpful to women. This bill is an example of Arizona’s overall conservative attitudes and how women play a part in it. This bill was introduced by a Republican woman and having more woman on the legislature usually results in more advocacy for bills on women’s issues by women, and in Arizona, that means supporting bills that are more conservative regarding women’s issues even if it does not seem to help women because that is they are representing their constituents' beliefs. That is why many Democrats are moderate and many women in the state legislature are Republican because they do what they can to appeal to voters, so they do not often vote differently than the men in the legislature. The issue of abortion is one of the main arguments, along with the loss of traditional family values, against the ERA in Arizona and that is why it has not passed and why bills like this one do pass because in the end, they represent the opinions of the majority of votes and so do the legislators even if they are women.

One example of a piece of legislation that helped women is HB 2570 which is the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2019. It was passed by the house in April and is now going to the Senate. This bill would create a task force of the state, county, and tribal officials and advocates to investigate missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in Arizona. Representative Jennifer Jermaine, the Arizona bill's sponsor, said she believes states and federal lawmakers are discussing these crimes now because there's more diversity among elected officials. Jermaine said 'I think it's coming about this year in particular because women of indigenous descent have a seat at the table now. We're in the halls of power. We are in our state legislatures. We are in Congress. We have a voice. We're here, and we're forcing the issue”. Arizona has the third-highest number of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in the country. But the problem is generally ignored by state and city officials because they never had the data to address it. This bill will require the task force to fix communication and jurisdictional issues between law enforcement agencies in the state and on reservations. It will also get all agencies in the state to collect the same information on missing persons and homicide cases so all agencies would add to and have access to the same data. When there are sexual assault cases on reservations, they would have to turn them over to federal and state agencies who would reject many of them. They don’t see what a problem it is, or they are ignoring it because they do not track any data on these crimes. Jermaine claims that when the data exists and the government has to track it they can no longer ignore the issue. Once there is data and the source of the problem is found, there can be more legislation and more done to fix the actual problem. This legislation is an example of how women and minorities are using their power to represent and help the communities they come from and represent. With more diversity, the unique problems that affect these groups can be recognized and fixed. But this specific piece of legislation is not necessarily conservative or liberal, it is about agency communication, which is why I believe it passed the House without trouble. This is something conservative women and men can support without misrepresenting their constituents or hurting their political careers. It is difficult to say that women are underrepresented in this state because, while the percentage of women is not exactly reflective of how many women are in the state, there is a higher percentage of women in this legislature than any other in the United States and they reflect the opinions of the majority of constituents.

A major issue faced by women in the United States that are often disregarded as no longer relevant is the pay gap. As seen in the ERA discussion Senator Farnsworth believed that the laws in place were enough to prevent a pay gap. He claimed that it is illegal now anyway so the people who pay women less should be held accountable by those laws. But it is difficult and expensive to prove under the current laws that a violation of the Equal Pay Act has occurred, not to mention the amount of power larger corporations would have, even outside of the courtroom. Women in Arizona are generally making 83 cents to every dollar a man makes resulting in an annual wage gap of about $7,337 which means on average Arizona women who are employed full-time lose a combined total of nearly $13 billion every year. The gap is even larger for women of color. African American women are paid 68 cents, Latinas are paid 55 cents, and Asian women are paid 80 cents for every dollar paid to white men. This money is a huge loss to women and their families as well as the economy. The money women lost could pay for more than 11 additional months of child care, 49 more weeks of food for her family, eight months more rent, or 5.6 months of mortgage and utility payments. The wage gap is even larger for mothers than for working single women. They are paid 71 cents to every dollar paid to fathers. Mothers are breadwinners for nearly half of families with children in the United States and those numbers are even higher for women of color, up to 81% for African American mothers. In Arizona, more than 307,000 family households are headed by women and about 31% of those families have incomes that are below the poverty line (Arizona Women and the Wage Gap). According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research if women were paid an equal salary as men the number of children with working mothers living in poverty would be nearly cut in half, dropping from 5.6 million to 3.1 million, and the United States economy would have produced additional income of $512.6 billion. The poverty rate of families in the United States would be cut in half, falling from 8.0 percent to 3.8 percent among working women. Having a pay gap in the United States is detrimental to the economy, working women, and their families. Many believe the ERA would fix this, but it is unlikely to be passed in Arizona this year and to some, it is unclear how the ERA would be any better than any legislation currently in place. But the fact is, the economic status of women in Arizona and the United States is suffering because of the pay gap and the effects it has on women, and therefore everyone else is serious.

Works Cited

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