Utah is struggling to achieve a gender balance in its state boards and commissions, despite 2016 legislation encouraging this equality.

Women filled a little under a third of Utah's 3,045 board or commission positions in 2019, up 4.6% since 2016 but still far from reaching an even divide between men and women, according to a report released Tuesday by the Utah Women and Leadership Project.

Females were most represented on boards and commissions in the state's Department of Health and its Department of Heritage and Arts, making up 55% of those positions. Women also held 53% of positions on the State Board of Education's boards and commissions, according to the report. Conversely, women held zero seats on the Public Service Commission, Department of Financial Institutions, Department of Human Resource Management and the National Guard.

Many Utah departments related to fields including business, finance and technology tend to be male-dominated, but the report shows that female representation has increased substantially on boards in the Governor's Office on Economic Development (18% to 30%) and Criminal & Juvenile Justice (33% to 44%).

Most of commission and board members are appointed by the governor, but others are elected by the public.

There's no national data comparing gender representation on boards across all states, but the report noted a few state-level statistics. In 2016, females made up more than 40% of state boards in Connecticut, North Dakota and Texas, and they exceeded 30% representation in Idaho and Alaska.

In Iowa, state boards and commissions have a fairly even gender split this year, according to The Salt Lake Tribune . And that's required by law: Iowa passed legislation in 2016, making it the only state to require a gender balance instead of just encouraging it, as Utah's law does.

Utah's efforts to increase female representation in its government boards and commissions comes at a time when the state is boasting its highest turnout of female voters.

Another Utah Women and Leadership Project report released in September revealed that 60.5% of women headed to the polls in 2018 than they did in 2006, when the state ranked last in the nation for its percentage of female voters at 36.8%.