Pennsylvania lags in women officeholders

On this, the first day of Women's History Month, it is useful to remember a history lesson of the 2010 elections: The days when a woman had to talk tough and don a boxy pantsuit to be taken seriously at the polls are no more.

Following Hillary Rodham Clinton's 2008 primary run and Sarah Palin's continued omnipresence, dozens of women emerged last year as major contenders for high office, touting their femininity as much as their faculties.

They sought Senate seats in competitive races, from Delaware's gaffe-plagued Christine O'Donnell to Nevada's hard-right Sharon Angle. Silicon Valley executives Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina dominated the political talk of California, while in other states, women broke glass ceilings in governors' mansions, including New Mexico's - where both parties nominated female candidates.

But not in Pennsylvania.

"We are so far behind," said Mary Ellen Balchunis-Harris, a political scientist at La Salle University. "There's a real glass ceiling in Pennsylvania politics for women. And it's only been lately that we're seeing that breaking a little."

The Center for Women and American Politics at Rutgers University (in New Jersey, which elected a female governor, Christie Whitman, in the 1990s) ranks Pennsylvania 42d of 50 states for percentage of female officeholders.

The Keystone State has yet to elect a female governor, attorney general, or U.S. senator. A woman has never occupied the office on the second floor of Philadelphia City Hall. And of all the women in Congress, Pennsylvania claims but one: Allyson Y. Schwartz (D, Montgomery).

Even South Carolina - dead last in Rutgers' rankings - is now led by Gov. Nikki Haley, a 39-year-old swept into office on 2010's tide.

So what, exactly, does Pennsylvania have against women candidates? The answer is complicated, said female pundits and politicians alike.

Ask Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman - whose name has been widely touted as a possible Republican candidate for attorney general in 2012 - and she visibly stiffens.

It's not, she says, that Pennsylvania's electorate won't embrace a female candidate.

"From the perspective of society and its willingness to accept women as leaders in government, we're there," Ferman said. "The question now becomes: Why are there so few?"