Women Lead Spending, China Spat in Senate Still Dominated by Men

Negotiators charged with pulling the US back from the brink of its latest fiscal cliff looked familiar: A gaggle of elected officials — mostly white men — huddled in Washington’s highest offices edging close as ever to economic disaster.

But cracks are emerging in Washington’s legacy power-broker facade. White House budget chief Shalanda Young took a key role on President Joe Biden’s negotiating team. Young, the former staff director of the House Appropriations Committee, is the first Black woman to lead the budget office. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) ushered a debt ceiling hike through the House in 2021. In 2011 President Barack Obama — only the second Black senator from Illinois — forged a compromise with then-Speaker John Boehner to avert a fiscal cliff.

The deal to green-light spending clears the way for more women to develop its details than ever with four at the helm of the House and Senate appropriations committees for the first time. And as lawmakers heat up competition with China, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) put women at the forefront of that chamber’s push to follow-up last year’s bill boosting domestic semiconductor output, led by Senate Commerce Chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.). Agriculture Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) — also on the China team — will lead the Senate’s rewrite of the five-year farm bill.

Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) with Schumer and fellow chairs talk to reporters about China competitiveness legislation in the US Capitol on May 3 in Washington, D.C.

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

But political experts said the gains are slow-going and less than necessary for equity. Some totals even appear to be slipping — 10 years ago, Senate Democrats had eight women chairs to today’s four.

The Numbers

Twenty-five women make up a quarter of Senate lawmakers. Four Democrats chair committees and five Republicans are ranking members among its 20 main panels. Schumer counts five women on his leadership team.

At the staff level, 10 women serve as majority staff directors and seven others lead minority staffs. In lawmakers’ personal offices, more than 30 of 100 staff chiefs are women. The developments give women more say over legislation and greater control over hearings held, witnesses called, and deals cut. For lawmakers, top posts are also springboards to leadership.
The total chairmanships aren’t far removed from the House, where only three women lead major committees.

“Only a little more than 40 women had chaired a committee in the House or Senate” in congressional history, according to Maya Kornberg of NYU Law’s Brennan Center for Justice. “The numbers are rising, but they’re not rising enough.”

Kornberg said women’s staffing gains are important but don’t reflect they comprise about half of congressional aides. More troubling, she said, are the lack of leadership roles for minorities, despite Schumer’s seven-year initiative to promote diversity.

“There’s only one Black chief of staff, four Black legislative directors, and one Black communications director and there are zero Black people in top committee staff positions in the Senate,” Kornberg said. “So that is pretty shocking.”

Paul Thornell, a principal at Mehlman Consulting and board member of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, said it’s become common to meet with women staff directors but only Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) has a chief of staff who is Black. He said the Center’s analysis shows minorities have difficulty getting top jobs.

“Across the board everybody needs to do better by any measure, on all races, all ethnicities,” said Thornell, who previously worked for former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.). “We’re dealing with scenarios where certain questions are not being asked, legislation not introduced, hearings not being held in part because we don’t have in senior roles people of diverse backgrounds.”

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) declined to discuss the lack of top Black staffers. Durbin’s personal office and staff at the Judiciary Committee where he’s chair are led by white men. However, his office and committee both report high levels of diverse hiring.

“I can’t speak for others, but we’re doing our best to promote diversity,” Durbin said.

Women’s Long Climb

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), one of three Black senators, said women and minorities made great strides. Schumer’s initiative calls for lawmakers to publicize hiring statistics, but only Democrats comply. Unlike the House, the Senate doesn’t have a diversity office requiring information from lawmakers.

“When I first came here nine years ago this was the least diverse place I had ever worked,” Booker said, recalling a Foreign Relations Committee meeting with only white men. “It’s relative to where we’ve been. We’ve still come a long way.”

A dozen senators now identify within a minority group, including six Hispanics, two Asian Americans, and one American Indian.

Female lawmakers’ paths show it takes decades to gain a gavel. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) served on Appropriations since arriving in the Senate in 1993. She’s only the second woman to lead the committee. Ranking member Susan Collins (R-Maine), first elected in 1997, also had a long wait until seniority put her in the top GOP post.

The Senate’s biggest concentrations of women are at Appropriations and Commerce, where Cantwell became its first woman chair in 2021. Each boast 10 women.

The developments show progress from what Kornberg described as the historic norm: placing women on panels dealing with “feminine” issues and leaving men “things that are hard or masculine like defense or tax.”

Kornberg said that bias remains, and women leading appropriations “does not mean that women have adequate representation on all of the kinds of key taxation and policy committees.”

While the number of Senate committees chaired by women only slightly exceeds those in the House, far more of their staffs are led by women. And at some the chiefs of staff on both sides are women. Banking Chair Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and ranking member Tim Scott (R-S.C.) have women chiefs.

Collins, who named a woman to oversee her Appropriations staff, said she doesn’t believe the Senate needs mandatory reporting or rules.

“It’s not something that’s of great concern to me because I have a diverse staff myself and always have,” Collins said. She was tapped to be a staff director when she worked for Sen. Bill Cohen (R-Maine). “I have had different ethnicities, races, religions, but I just try to choose the best person.”