ZACHARY: Tiananmen Square frames media freedom in the U.S.

This was supposed to be the Year of the Woman in national and state politics but someone forgot to give Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and members of the Senate committee for committee assignments the memo.

State Sen. Renee Unterman has been ousted as Senate Health and Human Services Committee chair and is no longer vice-chair of the powerful appropriations committee.

Duncan has released the list of committee chairmen for 2019-20 and some of his choices are not sitting well with women and political opponents.

Unterman is the ranking female member of the Senate and has two decades of experience.

She is a GOP loyalist and strongest voice among the few Republican women under the Gold Dome.

Across the nation, more women were elected to statehouses and the U.S. Congress and are changing the landscape of American politics.

The gains in Georgia were modest. The number of women in the Senate increased to 12, and there are 51 women in the House.

The House and Senate continue to be under the control of white men.

Georgia’s population is majority female. Only 27 percent of the General Assembly is female.

The women Duncan and the committee did appoint were handed lesser committees and smack of token gestures.

Then, there is the fact that Unterman supported former Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle over Gov. Brian Kemp in last year’s election and had a bit of a dust up with the Kemp campaign. Could this demotion be payback?

In another tone-deaf, misogynistic move, the Senate made it more difficult for a victim to lodge a sexual harassment complaint against a senator or staff member, limiting the amount of time a victim has to file complaints.

The Senate also watered down harassment rules by increasing the burden of proof for victims who lodge complaints against sitting senators and their staff. They also made it riskier to file a complaint because a person making allegations can be sanctioned if the complaint is deemed frivolous.

By contrast, Gov. Kemp’s executive orders around harassment are far more reasoned and fair.

Most confusing is a comment by Sen. Jeff Mullis, a Republican from Chickamauga who chairs the powerful Rules Committee and dismissed the objections about Unterman’s demotion as “whining” from Democrats. He then said the Dems behaved the same way when in power decades ago.

Did he just accuse female leaders of whining?

Talk about tone deaf.

Unterman is no Democrat.

And she is no whiner.

She is a high-profile, effective, conservative Republican who has represented the 45th District in the Senate for 16 years. Prior to that she served in the House for four years.

In what, by all accounts, should have been the Year of the Woman in Georgia politics in the midst of the #metoo movement, Unterman should be a star in the Georgia Republican Party, not a punching bag.

This demotion was not partisan, and coupled with the myopic watering down of rules pertaining to sexual harassment by senators themselves, there are clear signals that the good old boys club is stoking its campfire, circling its wagons and hunkering down.

Jim Zachary is CNHI Deputy National Editor, regional editor for its Georgia, Florida, Texas, Alabama and Mississippi newspapers and editor of the Valdosta Daily Times. He can emailed at jzachary@cnhi.com.