Women will guide Oregon Legislature in 2015

• Four of the top leadership positions in the Oregon Legislature are held by women.
• Oregon is one of two states where four women hold leadership roles. Colorado is the other.
• Women make up 31 percent of the Oregon Legislature%2C compared to a national average of 24 percent in state legislatures.
• Female leaders said they have adopted a collaborative%2C outcome-focused leadership style that allows for better%2C more open conversations on difficult topics.

On the day after the 2013 Oregon Legislature ended, Rep. Val Hoyle felt wrung out, worried about what hadn't been accomplished, which bills hadn't been passed. It had been a contentious year full of ugly, public battles over taxes and public pensions.

It did not necessarily feel like a triumph.

But then a longtime lobbyist stopped Hoyle, the Democratic caucus leader, in the hallway that day to tell her what he thought of her leadership.

He thought it was terrific.

He told her that she and Speaker of the House Tina Kotek held their own against big, entrenched male personalities — Senate President Peter Courtney and Gov. John Kitzhaber among them — and made the Legislature a more open, transparent place in the process. It allowed conversations to happen more easily, he told her.

Hoyle laughed after she told the story, remembering how novel hers and Kotek's leadership had seemed to those men two years ago.

"It felt (to them) like there was this giant estrogen wall (as you came) into the House," she said.

Kotek, 48, and Hoyle, 50, are now going into their third year as the first female pair to lead Oregon's House of Representatives. Along with two women members of leadership in the state Senate, they are at the helm of a state Legislature that has a stronger female leadership presence than almost any state in the country.

Only Oregon and Colorado have four women in leadership. It is a situation so rare as to be almost experimental.

Oregon generally has more women involved in politics than elsewhere, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Women make up 31 percent of the Oregon Legislature in 2015, compared to a national average of 24 percent, but they hold half of the top leadership positions in both the House and Senate.

In the Senate, Sen. Diane Rosenbaum, 65, leads the Democratic caucus, and Sen. Ginny Burdick is president pro tempore — essentially Courtney's deputy.

They credit their success to a host of factors: Oregon's pioneering spirit, the women who came before them, an organized network of groups designed to promote female politicians, the open-minded men they work with, their own hard work.

"Our society has evolved to a point where people aren't looking at gender as much as they used to," Burdick said. "There's not as much of a glass ceiling."

The world has changed a great deal since Burdick, 67, berosegan her career. In 1974, she became the first full-time female Associated Press reporter in the Oregon Capitol following World War II.

Later she worked her way through the corporate world as a communications consultant, once finding herself one of only five women in an oil company with 55,000 employees.

Burdick pursued a leadership role in the Legislature after she realized everyone else negotiating the tax increases that later became measures 66 and 67 in 2010 were in leadership roles, and she wanted to be on a level playing field.

A leadership role gave her more "oomph" in big policy conversations, she said.

This year, Burdick is co-chair of the Joint Committee on Implementing Measure 91, the group responsible for deciding how legalized marijuana should be handled in Oregon, a task seen as the most daunting of the session.

She has never felt held back in the Capitol, she said.

"It's a great testament to my male colleagues" that they have created a welcome environment, Burdick said.

Senate Republican Leader Ted Ferrioli has worked with her for years, she said, and "there's a reservoir of goodwill" between them. Likewise, she calls herself, "president of the Peter Courtney fan club."

Hoyle also described a close relationship with Courtney, recalling how he mentored her during her first term in 2009. House Republican Leader Mike McLane is also wonderful to work with, she said.

The men have never been a problem for Kotek either, at least not that she remembers.

"I'm kind of oblivious to it," she said.

Women who came before them helped pave the way.

Former Republican Rep. Karen Minnis served as speaker of the House in 2003 and 2005, and she was the third Republican woman to do so.

It was "a fast and furious experience," she said.

Minnis' time in leadership was different as she was surrounded mainly by male leaders. However, she said gender played far less of a role than the sheer task of managing 90 individual personalities.

In general, having more women in leadership feels more collaborative on all sides, Rosenbaum said, in contrast to the years when she was the only woman at the table.

For Hoyle, hadn't occurred to her to run for office when then-Rep. Chris Edwards' Eugene seat opened up in 2009. She was concentrating on finding someone to replace him, she said, and never looked at herself.

Former Rep. Vicki Walker, D-Eugene, encouraged Hoyle to do it and even paid for her tuition in Emerge Oregon, the program designed to help women succeed in politics.

Secretary of State Kate Brown, herself the first female Senate majority leader in Oregon, also urged Hoyle to run.

It took Emerge Oregon and the support of other women for Hoyle to learn to ask, "Why not me?" she said.

Her reluctance to run is not an uncommon attitude for women, Brown said. Men tend to assume they're qualified for politics, whether that's accurate or not, she said, but women hang back, focusing on all the ways they see themselves as not ready.

As a consequence, women need each other's support, Hoyle said.

For example, the Democrats started holding a women's caucus on Monday nights at the suggestion of former Rep. Carolyn Tomei, D-Portland. It was successful in helping women work out problems without feeling competitive, she said.

In fact, that stereotypical female competition has been largely absent from the Capitol, Kotek said.

"We're still in the minority and want to support each other," she said. "If you work hard and put in the hours ... other women want to support that."

The truth is that more women in power is better for everyone, Brown said. The voices in the conversation are more likely to represent the population at large, she said.

Minnis agreed.

"I honestly think that women can bring different points of view and help people see a different perspective," she said.

Kotek has seen that happen.

More than once, a woman has come to testify before a committee, and the men on the panel simply don't understand where she's coming from, Kotek said. But if a female legislator, particularly a powerful one, tells a male legislator that she has had a similar experience, it opens his eyes.

It carries more weight "from a person in the same position of authority as you," Kotek said.

Women also prioritize different public policy issues, Kotek said, simply because they see them in a different light.

For example, policies around wages and paid leave are at the forefront of the conversation in 2015 largely because the women in power have had first-hand experience with those topics, Kotek said.

Rosenbaum has a framed testament to this idea in her office.

Senate Bill 433 hangs next to her window, a reminder of one of her proudest moments.

The bill expanded access to Pap smears and mammograms for low-income women. Rosenbaum said it would never have passed in 2011 without the team of women whose picture hangs next to the bill.

It's not that men don't care about those kinds of ideas, Kotek said. It's just that they're not at the forefront of most men's minds.

Women also approach the conversation differently, she said.

Kotek spent much of the 2013 session in Mahonia Hall, the governor's residence, with Kitzhaber, Courtney, Ferrioli and McLane, trying to hash out a deal that cut public pensions and raised cigarette taxes, among other things.

It required a tremendous amount of compromise and collaboration, she said, and she believes her presence helped with that. She tends to focus on the goal, the destination of the conversation, she said, and it helped keep the men on track when they butted heads and opinions became intractable.

It may also have helped that Kotek forever has a well stocked bowl of York Peppermint Patties in her office, a reminder of her York, Pennsylvania, hometown.

Every woman in Capitol leadership described her own leadership style the same way: focusing on achieving a goal through collaboration.

Female leaders focus most on reaching a solution, they said. They are less concerned about personally getting credit, they said, if the job gets done. (Brown noted that U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley was also known for a highly collaborative approach when he was speaker of the House, so it is not only women who do this.)

Management consultant Sarah Stebbins of Portland said female leadership does make a difference in an organization, and she said it is particularly appropriate for a legislative body.

The policy problems lawmakers wrestle with are complex and multidisciplinary, she said, which require a more collaborative, "gestalt" approach to solve. Women tend to be good at this, Stebbins said.

They like process, communication and openness, she said.

That approach got the "grand bargain" passed in 2013, and Kotek, Hoyle, Rosenbaum and Burdick believe it will allow the Legislature to succeed at resolving the thorniest issues of 2015 also.

The four women have set themselves up to succeed, Stebbins said.

Women succeed in leadership when there are enough of them to work together and when that group of female leaders bonds together well, she said, which all four of these women have done.

It is also crucial that women support each other enough to allow their natural leadership style to shine, Stebbins said.

So far, these women have done so, and they have changed the way conversations happen in the Oregon Capitol. That was the difference that male lobbyist saw in Kotek and Hoyle two years ago, which Hoyle herself didn't see until she stopped to look.

"Until he pointed it out, I didn't realize there really is a difference in our management style," she said.

hhoffman@statesmanjournal.com, (503) 399-6719 or follow at twitter.com/HannahKHoffman