Female pundits and politicians agree that women seeking elective office face the same obstacles that they must deal with in other high-profile professions, including the pressure to defer even running until child-rearing duties are over.
The problems in Pennsylvania are also somewhat self-perpetuating - the state Legislature is typically a training ground for higher office, which means the low percentage of women in Harrisburg continues to make it less likely that they will ascend to Congress or the governor's mansion.
But that still doesn't explain why in 2010 even states such as South Carolina are looking to break down the kind of gender barriers that are still solidly entrenched here.
Lowe noted that two of the most talked-out victories by women last week - Republican primary wins in California for Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, and ex-eBay boss Meg Whitman - may not be relevant to anywhere else. She noted that both came from the state's high-tech Silicon Valley - a friendly place for female entrepreneurs - and were each able to spend millions of dollars they earned there on their campaigns.
In fact, it has been conservative Republican women who've pulled off some of the biggest surprises in 2010, especially Nevada GOP far-right Senate nominee Sharron Angle, who'd like to abolish the Department of Education and voted against flouride in that state's drinking water.
Some experts believe the rise of conservative women may be closely tied to the growing role in politics of the Internet and especially social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, which have broken down longstanding barriers to entering poltical life. Surely, many were also inspired by the 2008 rise of Sarah Palin in the GOP and Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party.
Again, it's not clear why those trends have bypassed the Keystone State. Ironically, that so-called first "Year of the Woman" in 1992 was rooted in Pennsylvania, thanks to anger over the treatment in the Senate of Anita Hill, the sexual-harassment accuser of then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.
Fury over Sen. Arlen Specter's questioning of Hill inspired a novice Senate candidate named Lynn Yeakel, who nearly defeated him and inspired predictions of breakthroughs for female Pennsylvanians to come. But 18 years later, women here are still waiting for the glass ceiling to fall.
