The Vermont House gathers in the Statehouse on Jan. 10, 2024. File photo by Natalie Williams/VTDiggerWhen Vermont’s incoming first-term senators gathered in the Senate chamber in Montpelier this week for their new member orientation, the nine newcomers had something in common: They were all men.The new slate of senators will take their oaths of office at the start of the two-year legislative biennium in January. And this year, only 10 out of 30 members will be women, compared to 12 women in the chamber this past biennium.Historically, the number of women in the upper chamber has never surpassed 12, according to historical data from the House Clerk’s Office.“We’re losing two women, and it’s taken years for us to get to where we are,” Sen. Ginny Lyons, D-Chittenden Southeast, said in an interview this week. “For me, it’s unfortunate when you think about what we’re losing.”The Vermont House, too, is slated to see a small dip in female representation among the 150-member chamber, from an all-time high of 46% at the start of 2023, to 45% come 2025.To gather gender data on each chamber, VTDigger independently verified individual members’ gender identities based on historical data from the House Clerk’s office, candidates’ campaign materials and biographies, local news coverage and individual interviews.Within the class of newly elected House members, the gender disparities are more stark. Of 51 representatives-elect, 37 are men, 13 are women and one is nonbinary.“Last biennium, we were about 46% female in the House, which was a huge step — I think the closest we've ever gotten to 50-50,” Rep. Ashley Bartley, R-Fairfax, said this week.But looking at the new class of incoming legislators, Bartley said she thought to herself, “What happened? Why are we here?”Part of that answer appears to lie within the Republican party. This election cycle, Vermont saw a red wave of newly elected Republicans, the likes of which hasn’t been seen in decades.In the Senate alone, Republicans flipped six seats, narrowing Democrats’ majority to 17-13. And in the House, Democrats lost a net 19 seats to Republicans. Come January, the lower chamber will be composed of 87 Democrats, 56 Republicans, four Progressives and three independents.Among that wave of 30 new House Republicans, seven are women and 23 are men. Of the entire 56-member House Republican caucus this January, 42 are men. That’s 75% of the caucus.House Minority Leader Pattie McCoy, R-Poultney, said in an interview that when the party is recruiting candidates, the issue of their gender “doesn't rise to the top.”“It's, can we field a good candidate for this district? That's how we approach it,” McCoy said. “It's not, can we field a good female candidate for this district?”It’s a distinction from the Democratic Party, which not only intentionally recruits female candidates — it has an entire political action group dedicated to doing so. Emerge Vermont, founded by Madeleine Kunin, the first and only woman to have been elected Vermont’s governor, recruits and trains Democratic women to run for political office.There is no comparable organization actively recruiting and training Republican women to run for office in Vermont, according to McCoy and Bartley — or even an entirely nonpartisan entity promoting prospective female candidates.“I think Vermont is at a disadvantage because organizations like Emerge are partisan,” Bartley said. “I've even looked into: What would it take to start a program, similarly to Emerge, that is nonpartisan for women who identify as Republican, as Democrat, as independent, or whatever party?”“Why are we limiting ourselves to a pool of individuals who, by and large, are one party, one mindset?” Bartley added.As for why the GOP, itself, shies away from going after female recruits, Bartley and McCoy agreed that the dynamic largely stems from the party’s aversion to identity politics. McCoy pointed to her own experience in politics, and her ability to rise up to become the chamber’s minority leader, and said, “I've never used my gender to get anywhere.”“My mindset is, I'm coming in equal to everybody else in that House, and every other female in that House should feel the same way. They ran a good campaign, regardless of whether they're Democrat, Progressive, independent or Republican,” McCoy said. “I never think in terms of a gender — I don't. I look at, what are your qualifications?”For Bartley, gender does matter somewhat. She pointed to some of the major pieces of legislation passed in recent years in Vermont — the child care bill, a bill promoting pay transparency — and said, “I'm not saying that my male counterparts can't focus on those aspects, but I think it says a lot that they came from female legislators.”And from within the “good old boy network” of the GOP, she said, sometimes the party’s relative quietness on those issues is deafening.“It's funny, because I have felt almost less than a woman, because I take the R next to my name,” Bartley said. “With issues like abortion and childcare and paid family leave, these are all things that I think we all care about, but one side definitely advocates for that more, where one side is very quiet about that. And I think it's really hard to feel established in who you are as a woman in the Republican Party.”Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘It’s taken years for us to get to where we are’: Women’s ranks in the Statehouse will be smaller come 2025.