Greater Cleveland Republican Maureen O’Connor is chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, the first woman elected to lead Ohio’s judiciary.
Earlier, O’Connor was lieutenant governor. Today, including O’Connor, four of the high court’s seven justices are female. The other women on the court are Justices Jennifer Brunner and Melody Stewart, both Democrats, and Republican Justice Sharon Kennedy.
Notably, soon after women gained the right to vote in Ohio in 1920, Greater Cleveland independent Florence E. Allen was elected to the Supreme Court in 1922 – the first woman in the United States on any state’s highest court. Later President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Allen to the Cincinnati-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Allen was the first woman named to any circuit of the federal Appeals court.
Despite Allen’s pioneering election to judicial office – she had also been Ohio’s first female Common Pleas judge – not until 1970, 50 years after women gained the right to vote in Ohio, was a woman elected to statewide executive office: Democrat Gertrude W. Donahey, daughter in law of one-time governor and senator A. Victor (Vic) Donahey, was elected state treasurer. She served through 1982.
On the General Assembly side, gender equity is improving in Ohio. At the November 2020 statewide general election, Ohioans sent a record number of women to the state Senate and Ohio House. All told, according to Legislative Service Commission data, 41 women were elected to the combined 132 seats in the Senate and House – or about 31% of the legislature’s seats Not bad, but for the fact that the Census reports that 51% of Ohio’s residents are women.
And in the 102 years since women were guaranteed the right to vote, only one – Reynoldsburg Republican JoAnn Davidson – has served as the Ohio House’s speaker (1995-2000). Meanwhile, a woman has never served as president of the Ohio Senate, though in the years before the Senate presidency took its current form, Cleveland Heights Democrat Margaret A. Mahoney held the predecessor post – Senate president pro tempore-majority leader – in 1949 and 1950.
Bottom line: Ohio has been improving in the gender equity department, especially in the legislature, and notably in the state Supreme Court. But neighboring Michigan and Kentucky have elected women to governorships, and Michigan and West Virginia have elected women to the U.S. Senate. Ohio has some catching up to do – in Columbus as well as in the U.S. Senate.
Thomas Suddes is an adjunct assistant professor at Ohio University. He covered Ohio politics for the Cleveland Plain Dealer for many years.
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