This study shows that the gender, race and age factors of our 50 state legislatures do not look much like America. There is very little diversity especially on gender and race. State legislatures are still predominately white male.
Part of this is caused by how reapportionment is done every ten years on census data and most states create congressional and state legislative districts based on the partisan needs of whatever the majority political party is in a particular state.
Another factor is the candidate recruitment by the political parties is not as sensitive to diversity as needed because the political party is more concerned about a political partisan majority than they are in seeing more people of color and/or more women candidates. Also financial support is often not available to these candidates so that they could run and win a legislative office. Lots of other factors also. This is a very complicated and multi-tiered issue and problem.
There needs to be more work, quickly, on how are we going to have our state legislatures reflect America and assure diversity.
This study is worth a read.
http://morningconsult.com/2015/12/americas-legislatures-dont-look-much-like-america/