Evergreen State tops in Cabinet-level women

Washington is the only state in the country with more than half of its Cabinet-level state government appointments held by women, says an organization that works to help women achieve public leadership positions.

The state is also tied with New York for having had the biggest increase in the number of women in such roles in the past decade, the Women's Campaign Forum Foundation said in a report released Wednesday.

Fifty-two percent of such appointments in Washington are held by women, compared with only 11 percent in 1997.

The study found that Washington has women in 23 of the appointed state positions it defines as Cabinet-level jobs appointed by the governor. It excluded state elected officers and top executive staff appointees and advisers, such as chiefs of staff.

New York and North Dakota are tied for second place, with each having women in 50 percent of such appointments. In Oregon, women hold 27 percent of those positions, and in Idaho, 17 percent. The report said Texas and New Hampshire have no women in Cabinet-level jobs.

"On average, male Cabinet appointees outnumber women Cabinet appointees in our states by a ratio of 2-to-1," the report noted.

The report said the reasons Washington leads the nation "are many, but include a commitment on the part of the governor's office to recruit a diverse pool of candidates for consideration for appointed positions."

What the report didn't mention is that Washington is also the only state in which the governor and both U.S. senators, all Democrats, are women.

Gov. Chris Gregoire is one of nine women governors. Women hold four of the nine seats on the state Supreme Court, and in the recent past held five.

"Women governors and Democratic governors appoint more women than their male and Republican counterparts -- but only by a margin of 4 percent and 3 percent respectively," the report said.

It said women appointees tend to "open up more opportunities for women overall," and, "more importantly, appointed leadership is a vital pipeline to elected office" -- as it was for Gregoire, for example. She was an assistant state attorney general when former Gov. Booth Gardner appointed her head of the Department of Ecology. From there she was elected state attorney general and, in 2004, governor.