FILE – Republican State Sen. Nicole Akins Boyd of Oxford, stares at a projected slide bearing fiscal budget numbers during a Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024, meeting of the Mississippi Joint Legislative Budget Committee, while other members review their personal copies of the proposed fiscal year 2026 Budget Recommendation, in Jackson, Miss. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)
JACKSON, Miss. – Women represent half of the U.S. population but it’s still rare for them to have leading roles in setting taxes or budgets in some states.
Take Mississippi, for example. Only one woman currently serves on the 14-member Joint Legislative Budget Committee. The elite group makes the first recommendations on how much money the state should spend on schools, prisons, Medicaid and other programs, giving these lawmakers substantial influence over their colleagues and over the lives of people who use government services.
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Second-term Sen. Nicole Akins Boyd was appointed to the committee by Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, a fellow Republican who said he did not consider whether to choose a balance of men and women.
“I don’t look at it so much like, ‘We need a woman here,’ or something like that,
Women represent half of the US. But they sometimes lack clout in budget and tax talks
