Nebraska women navigating their own political storm

By JoAnne Young

 

Women in Nebraska are in the middle of a political storm, fighting for autonomy, trying and often failing to accomplish improvements they believe are imperative for their families, children and professional lives. You need only to look at a recent incident of public sexual harassment on the floor of the Legislature to understand it. 

 

Childcare costs for Nebraska parents are among the least affordable in the nation, costing slightly over $1,000 a month for an infant, averaging $15 an hour, in general. Five Lincoln childcare centers have closed in the past six months. The Nebraska Legislature passed two bills addressing affordable childcare this session, but failed to fund them. 

 

At the same time, the Legislature is chipping away at women’s ability to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy, with abortion now outlawed after the 11^th week, with only a few exceptions. 

 

Parents can’t choose medical care for transgender children until they are 19. And the governor has issued an executive order that requires gender identification to be determined at birth, affecting athletics, schools, anti-discrimination laws. Only a female can be a mother and only a male a father. 

 

Teachers and librarians, the majority women, came under fire when a bill was introduced this session to have them held criminally responsible for providing “obscene material” to Nebraska students in grades K-12. It undoubtedly would have led to book banning. 

Will the gender pay gap ever go away?

 

I decided to ask Sen. Megan Hunt of Omaha, who has six sessions of experience in the Legislature, what it’s like these days for women at the Capitol. 

 

She had a telling story. She lost a lot of weight over the interim last year, 60 to 70 pounds, and when she returned in January, at about the weight she was when she first campaigned six years ago, people treated her differently, especially the men. They considered her “more attractive,” she said.

 

“It’s stark. It’s highly noticeable ... it’s them putting me more in a position of, like, ‘poor sweet little girl, let’s make sure nothing bad happens; I’ll help you out.’” 

Hunt believes women must have loyalty to men in power, and the institutions they run, to have any power themselves. They promise leadership and opportunities, but they’re always going to make decisions based on their own best interests, she said. 

 

The Legislature had a record high number in this two-year session of 18 female senators, 37%, and could have a voting bloc for important issues, but the split between conservatives and progressive ideologies ensured that didn't happen. 

 

“You’d think we’d be able to agree on things like helping children who are living and born and need food, but we cannot even do that,” Hunt said. 

 

She believes conservative women have more cache and influence because they align themselves with men and their agendas. She is good one-on-one with other senators, she said, but when group think takes over, it becomes more tribal, more us vs. them. 

 

I’d like to see more women in the Nebraska Legislature, like Nevada, who established a female majority in 2019 of 52%, and has continued to add to it. In 2023, the majority grew to 62% overall and in each of both houses. It doesn’t stop there. Five of seven Nevada Supreme Court justices are women (compared to two of seven in Nebraska). Four of the largest cities have female mayors; two of four U.S. representatives and both U.S. senators are female.  

 

A few other states are poised to follow Nevada. Nebraska would have to add seven women to get a slight majority. 

 

Nevada legislators don’t make a big deal out of the female majority, said Steve Sebelius, political reporter, KTNV Channel 13 in Las Vegas and before that with the Las Vegas Review Journal for 23 years. They want to be recognized for their legislation and political achievement, he said, not for their gender. The majority victories mostly come down to individual districts and races and the quality candidates who run. Many are business owners, attorneys, professionals, he said.

 

The one office they haven’t conquered is the governor’s. “I can’t imagine the state of Nevada will not have a female governor within next 10 years. It’s almost inevitable,” Sebelius said. 

 

In Nebraska, Hunt said she’d like to see women in the Legislature toughen up, speak directly, be firm, call senators and others out when they are being sexist or racist. “Nobody should be normalizing that,” she said.  

 

The Nebraska Legislature is the smallest in the nation, and run in such a way that senators have a lot of power, Hunt said. They can introduce as many bills as they want, chair committees without party interference, have no party caucuses or whips or leaders telling them what to do. 

 

Step into that power, she said. 

 

She'd also like to see more women run for office who are independent thinkers. The only way things change is to have more representation and diverse perspectives. But women must be willing to ignore bad treatment and objectification by colleagues, constituents, slanted publications, and toxic comments they receive on social media and in comment sections. 

 

“You have to say, so what? I’m going to do the work anyway,” she said. 

 

Information on running for office is available at: https://www.womenwhorunne.org/howtohelp

 

Spirit of the Prairie art by Elizabeth Honor Dolan, located in the Capitol law library. 

 

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