State Rep. Lisa Posthumus Lyons, R-Alto / Kathleen Gray/Detroit Free Press
• Eva McCall Hamilton, of Grand Rapids, was the first woman to serve in the state Legislature when she was elected to the state Senate in 1921.
• Cora Reynolds Anderson, of L’Anse in the Upper Peninsula, was the first woman elected to the House of Representatives in 1924. The chamber’s office building across the street from the Capitol is named for her.
There has never been a woman Speaker of the House or Senate Majority Leader, but …
• State Rep. Dianne Byrum, D-Onandaga, was the first woman House Minority Leader from 2002-2006, and by the time she left, Democrats had regained control of the state House.
• State Sen. Gretchen Whitmer, D-East Lansing, has been the Senate Minority Leader since 2011.
• State Sen. Shirley Johnson, R-Royal Oak, who served in the Legislature from 1980-2006, has been the only woman to head the powerful Appropriations Committee in the Senate.
The executive branch has fared somewhat better. There have been:
• One woman governor and Attorney General: Jennifer Granholm.
• Three female Lieutenant Governors: Matilda Dodge Wilson, who inherited fortunes from husbands John Dodge and Alfred Wilson and whose 1,400-acre estate has become what is now Oakland University, served for six weeks in 1940 after she was appointed to fill the vacancy left when Lt. Gov. Luren Dickinson ascended to governor when Gov. Frank Fitzgerald died in office; Martha Griffiths under Gov. James Blanchard; and Connie Binsfeld under Gov. John Engler.
• Three Secretaries of State: Candice Miller, now a Congresswoman; Terri Lynn Land, who is running for the U.S. Senate; and Ruth Johnson.
■ Graphic: Number of women in Michigan's legislature
Despite the decline, there are a number of women emerging as respected and thoughtful leaders, including:
Sen. Rebekah Warren, 41, D-Ann Arbor.
Born and raised in Shiawasse County to a factory worker father and mother who was a nurse, Warren has been working in politics since graduating from the University of Michigan with a political science degree.
She worked for two Democratic legislators — Mary Schroer of Ann Arbor and Hubert Price of Pontiac — before taking the job as executive director of the Michigan chapter of the National Abortion Rights Action League.
“I’ve always been taught to do seomething that will make my corner of the world a better place,” she said. “And in this job, I’ve discoverd I get to help people in small and very significant ways on a daily basis.”
She served two terms in the state House of Representatives where she became seat mates with long-time legislator Alma Wheeler Smith, of Salem Township, who soon also became her mother-in-law when she married Smith’s son Conan Smith, a Washtenaw County Commissioner.
“She and I were friends first even before I met her son,” Warren said. “So I was sitting next to my friend, not my mother-in-law.”
In the House, she served in the majority, the minority and when the chamber was evenly split. She was one of two first-term women legislators to chair a House committee — the Great Lakes and Environment committee where she helped negotiate the Great Lakes Compact international treaty. She won a seat in the Senate in 2010 and has become a leading voice on environmental and health policy issues.
Even though she’s ranked as one of the most liberal members of the Legislature, she has worked across the aisle with Republican Senators Judy Emmons of Sheridan and Tonya Schuitmaker of Lawton to help craft legislation against human trafficking and elder abuse.
And she still feels the subtle differences of the way men and women are treated in Lansing.
“You catch little things that happen, like I’ll be sitting at a table with a bunch of male Senators and whoever is leading the meeting will address the men as Senator and then call me Rebekah,” she said. “It just feels patronizing.”
State Rep. Lisa Posthumus Lyons, 33, R-Alto
Politics is in her genes, but Lyons said she’s a farm girl “first and foremost.”
Her father, Dick Posthumus, has been a Senator, Lieutenant Governor and is now a close advisor to Gov. Rick Snyder. But to Lyons, “as far as I knew growing up, we had a sheep farm and we’d see my Dad come home and jump on the tractor.”
After graduating from Michigan State University with a degree in agriculture and natural resources communication, Lyons said she never really thought about running for office. Instead, she worked for both the state House and Senate Republicans, and later became the director of public policy for the Grand Rapids Association of Realtors and Alliance of Realtors.
She also married her high school sweetheart Brad Lyons, a deputy with the Kent County Sheriff’s Department and had four kids: Easton, Charlie, Gage and Fisher.
But in 2010, “I just felt that Michigan needed a new type of leader. I ran, not in spite of my family, but because of my family,” she said, noting that making sure her kids gain a great education with plenty of job potential was a top priority.
As a result, she’s taken over as chairwoman of the House Elections and Ethics, as well as the Education committees. She has sheparded legislation allowing for the dissolution of struggling public school districts, and expanding the number of low-performing schools that can be taken over by the state Educational Achievement Authority.
The issues and her boisterous advocacy for them have not endeared her to Democrats in the House, but that doesn’t phase her.
“I’m from the Republican Party that the Democrats like to fabricate that there’s a war on women. I don’t believe there’s a war on women,” she said. “Women care about these issues like a strong economy and good schools.
“And as a female, if you think there’s a boy’s club, join it. And heck, take it over.”
State Rep. Rashida Tlaib, 37, D-Detroit
As the eldest of 14 children, Tlaib knows a little bit about taking care of people. In her southwest Detroit district, she has become the person who speaks at 150 miles a minute and who poses the questions to people in power.
She is perhaps one of the most outspoken critics of Ambassador Bridge owner Manuel “Matty” Moroun, because of the impact the hundreds of trucks crossing the span every day have had on her district’s neighborhood.
She helped rally the neighborhood and pestered both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state Department of Environmental Quality against two massive piles of petroleum coke, a by-product of the petroleum industry, that were left and ultimately removed from along the Detroit River this summer.
Her latest battle is to get a bill passed that would strengthen existing state law against metal scrapping and theft, which is plaguing businesses, homeowners and utilities across the state. She said she’s not sure it will get passed before she has to leave the House next year because of term limits, but she’s already grooming a successor who will take over the issue if she wins and takes over Tlaib’s House seat.
And she’s opened a district office in Detroit that helps 60 people a week with everything from making sure the heat stays on, to helping people fill out their taxes in the spring.
“My service center has restored faith in government for a lot of people,” she said. “It’s kind of what a state rep is supposed to do.”
Tlaib graduated from Wayne State University with a political science degree and got a law degree from Cooley Law School in 2004. She’s married with two kids and hopes to continue her career in the Legislature by running for a seat in the Senate next year against incumbent Sen. Virgil Smith, D-Detroit.
“I had a baby on Thursday (her daughter Yousif who is now 2) and was back to work on Tuesday,” she said. “I really thought running for office was selling out, but I don’t think that anymore.”