So where are the women?

Cast your eye down the list of rumored and announced candidates for next year's U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races in Pennsylvania and try to find the one with the missing Y chromosome.

Of the eight or nine names mentioned as challengers to Sen. Arlen Specter, two women are in the mix -- maybe. On the Republican side, Peg Luksik, of Johnstown, has announced her candidacy, while on the Democratic side, U.S. Rep. Allyson Schwartz, of Philadelphia, has yet to rule out a bid, although she's considered unlikely to run since she's been steadily building seniority in the U.S. House.

And for governor? Not a single woman.

One year after Hillary Rodham Clinton waged the first credible campaign as a female presidential candidate, Pennsylvania finds itself in a familiar place compared with most other states when it comes to female participation in the state Legislature: in the cellar, ranked 46th out of 50, a number that has fluctuated over the years but never risen out of the bottom 10.

There is no sign that will change in 2010.

The half-dozen or so Democratic and Republican candidates mentioned as possible candidates for governor include Auditor General Jack Wagner, Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato and Democratic Lehigh County Executive Don Cunningham as well as Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Gerlach, state Attorney General Tom Corbett and former U.S. Attorney Pat Meehan.

In the Senate race, Ms. Schwartz is on the list, along with U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy and state Rep. Josh Shapiro, of Montgomery County, both Democrats. National Constitution Center CEO Joe Torsella, also a Democrat, has announced he's running. On the Republican side, most of the buzz lately has been about Mr. Specter's offensive against Pat Toomey -- a former congressman and head of a conservative think-tank -- in commercials that don't mention Ms. Luksik at all.

Indeed, party leaders are said to be unhappy that she's running, fearing she'll split the conservative vote, even though Ms. Luksik announced her bid well before Mr. Toomey decided to get in the race. While he's a former U.S. congressman and she's never held elective office, Ms. Luksik, 53, nearly defeated Barbara Hafer in the 1990 Republican gubernatorial primary and won 12 percent and 10 percent of the vote as a Constitution Party candidate in subsequent gubernatorial elections.

So, what's the matter with Pennsylvania?

Well, it's big, for starters. Commuting to the state capital every week can be a challenge from women trying to balance work-family issues.

"They asked me to run for the Legislature, and I said, 'No thanks, I don't have a wife,' " said Ann Wilson, the sole Republican and sole woman on Johnstown's city council. She has three elementary-school-age children and a "fantastic, supportive" husband who nonetheless has a job, too, making a weekly commute for her a difficult proposition.

If mothers do run, they get asked why, as Superior Court Judge Joan Orie Melvin famously found out during her first campaign in the 1990s when a member of the Pennsylvania Bar Association asked who would be home taking care of her six children. Times haven't changed that much: State Sen. Lisa Baker, R-Luzerne, said she frequently was asked who was home taking care of her son when she first ran for office in 2004.

Then, too, Pennsylvania is an old Rust Belt state with political parties and organizations still largely controlled by men. It's also a closed primary state, which means that political party leaders still have a strong say in who gets on the ballot, noted Allyson Lowe, who directs the Pennsylvania Center for Women, Politics and Public Policy at Chatham University. "The party leadership has a lot of power, so if they're not cultivating new faces -- women, minorities or any other nontraditional candidates -- that's going to be reflected on the ballot."

Pennsylvania has a full-time Legislature that pays well. That means, Ms. Lowe said, that those jobs are attractive to men, who snap them up early and consider them a lifetime career -- meaning, too, that women who wait to run for the Legislature when their children are older find themselves behind the curve in seniority.

Except, of course, in states where the legislature is part time and the pay isn't so high.

Lynn Yeakel, the Democratic nominee against Mr. Specter in 1992, remembered visiting Iowa State University for an event after her defeat by Mr. Specter. "I met all these women in the Iowa Legislature and I was amazed, until it was pointed out to me that it's part time and doesn't pay anything," she said with a laugh.

Ms. Yeakel, along with the late Genevieve Blatt, was one of only two women in Pennsylvania history to win their party's nomination to the U.S. Senate despite not being endorsed by their party's leaders. Ms. Blatt lost by a large margin to Sen. Hugh Scott, and while Ms. Yeakel's race was much closer, she said Mr. Specter's incumbency, plus skepticism among women voters and the media, hurt her chances.

"One reporter wrote that I had 'a high-pitched voice that lacked authority.' I loved that one," she said wryly. "Another wrote that I gave a speech while wearing a short black skirt. Now what does that have to do with anything?"

Since then, the state has had a female lieutenant governor -- the late Catherine Baker Knoll -- but never a female senator or governor. Only five women in Pennsylvania have, among them, held four different statewide offices, according to the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics. Moreover, the state has sent only seven women to Congress, three of whom succeeded their husbands.

New Jersey used to reside at the bottom with Pennsylvania, noted Deborah Walsh, director of the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics. Today, New Jersey is tied with Arizona for 12th place.

"We managed to turn things around by putting pressure on party leaders," said Ms. Walsh, noting that whenever there were openings requiring an appointment, four out of five of them went to women. "It doesn't happen because you wish it, it happens because there's an intervention."

"I think Pennsylvania is a tough political culture for women," said Ms. Schwartz, who spent 14 years in the state Senate -- sometimes clashing with the all-male leadership of both parties -- before being elected to the 13th Congressional District in 2004. She's in no rush to make a decision about challenging Mr. Specter. "There's time," she said in an interview recently, noting that as a member of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, which sets tax policy, she's "so engaged in so many important issues I care about."

"Pennsylvania does have a reputation for not being particularly friendly to women candidates -- and a Democratic Party structure that is almost hostile to the notion of women candidates," said Karen O'Connor, founder of the Women & Politics Institute at American University.

Ms. O'Connor said she's still rankled that Mr. Rendell discouraged Ms. Hafer, former auditor general and treasurer, from running against Bob Casey for the U.S. Senate in 2004, even though she was backed by Emily's List, an influential fundraising group for progressive women candidates.

Leslie Stiles, executive director of the Pennsylvania Commission for Women, said the governor has been "unprecedented in appointing more women" in his administration. "He genuinely cares about and understands women's issues," she added.

Ms. Stiles said it was unfair to blame the governor for Pennsylvania's poor track record in electing women to state office. "You can't hang it on him. Women have to change their social mores. They have to think differently, act differently. It doesn't happen all at once."

Indeed, other factors are at play, less to do with Pennsylvania's political structure and more to do with how many women regard themselves, expertssaid. Women tend to wait until they're asked to run, or think they need to be trained first.

"Men will wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and say, 'By gum, I'll be the best state legislator I've ever seen,' " said Ms. Walsh, while survey data has found that "women are far less likely to run unless they're recruited."

Moreover, added Ms. Lowe, a defeat can deter women from trying again. "Men run, lose and then they run again. Many women don't."

"I don't know many guys who lose and lay down," said former U.S. Rep. Melissa Hart. "Women do take campaign defeats more personally than men do."

To be sure, Ms. Hart, now a Pittsburgh attorney, was defeated in 2006 and again in 2008, but she doesn't rule out a future run for public office. And plenty of women -- Ms. Hafer and Ms. Knoll, for example -- ran repeatedly, sometimes winning, sometimes losing.

If the state Legislature is any measure, the Republicans have a better track record of recruiting women than the Democrats do, in part because they long have had an intensive training program for women candidates, named after the late Ann Anstine, a Republican Party state leader. The state House has 16 Republican women members compared with 11 Democrats. The state Senate has six Republican women and four Democrats.

The Democrats do not have a comparable training program, but Mary Isenhour, executive director of the state party, said one is in the works, to be launched later this year and named for Ms. Knoll.

Once in office, though, women find it hard to climb the leadership ladder. State Rep. Kathy Manderino, D-Philadelphia, is widely respected for her intelligence and political acumen -- plus, as the daughter of the late House Majority Leader James Manderino, a Democrat from Monessen, she possesses a last name with currency in Harrisburg. But Ms. Manderino, who has served since 1992, tried and repeatedly failed to land a spot in the leadership.

There are signs of change, at least in areas of politics that don't require long commutes. Many women are running -- and winning -- judicial races.

To the extent that the Legislature is seen as a breeding ground for future statewide candidates, little will change until that institution changes. At stake isn't just the gender of who is senator or governor, but how decisions get made, said Rutgers' Ms. Walsh. Studies have found that unless the gender mix is at least 30 percent to 70 percent, the minority's voice is mostly silent -- with the political culture continuing to reflect those in power.

That shouldn't be, said Ms. Manderino, who remembers a debate in her caucus after she was first elected over whether to support a particular bill. What she heard amazed her.

"Every man got up and said things like, 'These are who our friends are,' 'This will hurt our allies' or 'This is what our constituents want in order to re-elect us.' Every woman stood up and said, 'This is what our goal is,' 'This is what we want the outcome to be.' One was a very pragmatic approach, one was very idealistic, very policy oriented. And it made me see so clearly how we actually need both voices in this process, tugging at equal strength."