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WASHINGTON Candice Miller has a special status in the new Republican-run U.S. House: She's the only female lawmaker in the party to head a congressional committee.

Her domain? House Administration, a panel known more for tending to granular details - overseeing federal elections, parking lots and cafeterias - than grabbing headlines.

"I don't want to diminish her position but it's not Ways and Means, it's not the Budget Committee," said Debbie Walsh, head of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University in New Jersey. "It's much more administrative."

Even as Republicans seek to attract more female voters and fend off attacks from Democrats on women's issues, the lack of women heading the House's 22 committees shows the party has a long way to go to catch up to the minority party, Walsh said.

"It is shocking to think there is only one woman in the entire House that holds a committee chair," Walsh said. "Republicans had an opportunity to put women in leadership positions on committees and have made a conscious choice not to do so."

Indeed, it's less common for a female Republican to get a committee gavel than it is for a woman to run a major U.S. corporation. Miller's lone chairmanship means that 4.5 percent of the 22 Republican women serving in the House will head panels during the congressional session that began last week.

That compares with 25, or 5 percent, of Fortune 500 company chief executive officers who are women.

Republicans have made strides in responding to criticism that the House party leadership included few women. In 2012, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington was elected head of the Republican Conference, in charge of messaging and communications. Lynn Jenkins of Kansas was chosen as conference vice chairwoman, and Virginia Foxx of North Carolina as secretary.

Miller, 60, first became head of the House Administration panel in 2013 - the only woman to head a committee in that Congress, too - after losing a bid to run the Committee on Homeland Security. She was defeated by Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, although Miller, a Michigan lawmaker now starting her seventh term in the House, had been in Congress two years longer than he had.

Miller said in an interview that she's "delighted" to run the Administration committee and that the panel's duties, which include oversight of security on the House side of the U.S. Capitol complex and the Federal Election Commission, weren't belittled until she took over the job. The comments come mainly from people who want to attack Republicans in general, she said.

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Men rule Republican-led House as lone woman gets committee gavel