Legislative Pay Is a Structural Barrier to Women's Representation

Fair Compensation for Women Electeds

Who can afford to serve in a state legislature is not just a matter of individual circumstance. It is a design choice. In New York, legislators earn $142,000 a year. In New Mexico, they earn nothing beyond a per diem. That gap shapes who runs, who wins, and who can afford to stay.

Women lawmakers consistently cite salary as a factor in deciding whether to run, or whether to run again. When legislative pay sits well below a state's median income, service becomes something only the retired, the independently wealthy, or the exceptionally well-supported can sustain. That narrows the legislature before a single vote is cast.

Three mechanisms determine how states set legislative pay:

1. A vote by the legislature or citizens
2. An independent compensation commission
3. An automatic adjustment tied to an external factor like a cost-of-living index.

‍Our research found that independent commissions consistently outperform the alternatives. When legislators vote on their own pay, they risk looking self-serving to voters, whether or not the raise is warranted. When commissions operate independently and their recommendations take effect automatically, that risk disappears and pay increases become far more likely to happen at all.

Twenty-two states currently use a compensation commission. The results are uneven; commission design determines whether they work. The distinction that matters most is autonomy: commissions whose recommendations require legislative approval routinely stall, while commissions with automatic implementation move pay forward.

Why This Is a Women's Representation Issue

Women hold roughly a third of state legislative seats nationally, a record high that still falls well short of parity. Low pay compounds the other barriers women already face running for and staying in office, particularly around caregiving responsibilities and the cost of balancing legislative service with outside income. Higher pay alone will not close the representation gap. But it removes one of the barriers standing between more women and sustained service, and it is one of the more tractable ones: compensation commissions are a proven, replicable structural fix, not a call for new legislation reinventing how legislatures work.

What We Found

• Compensation commissions are used in 22 states, more than any other pay-setting method
• States where commission recommendations take effect automatically see far less legislative reluctance to raise pay than states requiring a separate vote
• Voter misunderstanding of how much legislators are actually paid is common, and correcting it is a prerequisite for any successful reform effort
• Higher pay creates the conditions for more women to run, but does not by itself guarantee more women will win. It has to work alongside other structural changes.