When the Colorado House began its business Wednesday morning, nearly all the women were absent on the Democratic side of the chamber.

“Excused,” said House Speaker Crisanta Duran, D-Denver, every time the name of one of her female fellow caucus members was called during the morning roll call. “What’s going on here?” she asked at one point with a big smile.

By the time the roll call had concluded, 18 of the 19 Democratic women were marked as excused, leaving more empty seats than full ones on the majority’s side. (Only Duran, wearing a bold red jacket, was there.)

It turns out the Democratic women were conducting their own version of the Day Without A Woman protest that was being conducted outside the walls of the Capitol on March 8 on  International Women’s Day.

After noting this, Duran smiled and pointed to the door of her office off the floor as the women legislators streamed in. “Present,” she said, one after the other, as they flooded the chamber, all wearing red of some sort or another. (Most of the Republican women in the chamber were also wearing red, a symbol of solidarity with women and the day.)

“Ladies, we don’t know what we would do without you in this chamber,” Duran said.

State Rep. Leslie Herod, D-Denver, said the Democratic women had come up with the plan the night before.

“Our goal is important, it’s important that women are here. Many women can’t take off today – we stand in solidarity with you as well,” she said.

Then state Rep. Joe Salazar, D-Thornton, took to the microphone to express his support for his colleagues.

“We don’t want to imagine a day without women in this chamber, we don’t want to imagine a day without women in our lives,” he said and then named all the Democratic women in the House, adding a custom acknowledgment of each.

As the House got down to business, members adopted House Joint Resolution 1017, a measure to urge corporations to increase the presence of women on their corporate boards.

The resolution’s sponsors in the House are Duran and state Rep. Lois Landgraf, R-Colorado Springs; Senate sponsors are state Sens. NancyTodd, D-Aurora, and Beth Martinez Humenik, R-Thornton.

Citing studies that show increasing the number of women on boards even slightly makes a huge difference, Duran said, it was important to encourage “not only because it is the right thing to do but because you get better results by being inclusive.”

There’s a need, Duran said, “to move corporate boards in the right direction, as we move this state in the right direction, as we move this country in the right direction. We have a lot to accomplish.”

Recalling her grandmother Eva, who played a powerful role raising her family, Duran added, “We need to be able to have an opportunity, and it’s unbelievable that in the year 2017 we have not been able to accomplish more.”

Landgraf also took to the microphone to applaud Colorado for consistently being among the states with the most women lawmakers.

Colorado recently held the distinction as the legislature with the highest share of women members but sits in fourth place this year with 39 percent, just barely behind Nevada, with 39.7 percent, and New Hampshire and Vermont, which both have 39.4 percent, according to the Women’s Legislative Network of the National Council of State Legislatures. (Illinois, Arizona and Washington trail Colorado by a hair.)

– ernest@coloradostatesman.com