Even Before Election Day, Women Can Count Some Wins

November is upon us. The bloggers are blogging earnestly, the spinners are spinning madly, decision day is looming.

Amid all the high-stakes focus and fulmination over this vote serving as a Bush administration performance review, something else important is happening, something historic.

The 134 women running for House seats in the general election is just shy of the record 141 who ran in 2004. Twelve women have won their party's nomination for the Senate, beating a record set in 1992 and tied in 2002. Ten women are running for governor, matching a record set in 1994. Rutgers University's Center for American Women in Politics counts a record 2,431 women running for state legislative seats.

That is clearly good news for those who believe that a louder, stronger female voice is good for women and good for government.

Sometimes, though, good news is delivered in smaller packages.

I recently saw that CosmoGirl! magazine -- where you might go to find "10 ways to get him to notice you" -- has launched a project (call it a promotion if you're cynical) to put one of their readers in the White House by 2024.

It includes internships in places such as the United Nations Association and the office of New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney.

It caught my attention for two reasons. One, a magazine that makes its living understanding young women believes that politics sells magazines. Two, they believe their young female audience would see running for president as a logical thing to do.

And that is important. Even with the record and near record numbers of women running in mid-term races, we still have a long way to go.

15 Percent of Congress

Women make up half the U.S. population and more than half the voters, but represent just 15 percent of Congress. The world parliamentary average is over 16 percent. For a country that bills itself as the world's model of democracy and equality, that's shabby. Many developing countries boast far better numbers.

Former Rep. Pat Schroeder once called the White House the "the ultimate tree house with a 'No Girls Allowed' sign on it." There are currently a record 13 women running countries as presidents or prime ministers. In the United States, we are still running polls to test the idea of a female president.

Not all of the under-representation can be blamed on not being allowed in the tree house.

Women now hold about half of all professional and managerial positions in business. You can argue about how fast they've risen to the very top, but there is no argument about the numbers pouring through the door. Why aren't we seeing that same rush to politics?

It appears that there are co-dependent answers: Many capable, experienced women don't feel they are qualified for a political race, and they don't get the support and encouragement to think otherwise.

A 2005 Brown University-Union College Citizen Political Ambition Study gave us the first broad national study of why people run for office. The study and a subsequent book, "It Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don't Run for Office," were written by Richard L. Fox and Jennifer Lawless, who recently lost a tough congressional primary race in Rhode Island.

Women Wonder: Am I Qualified?

They found that even among those who excelled in other areas, women were twice as likely as men to say they were not qualified to run for office. Women in the study were significantly less likely to think they would win their first race. They also found that women received less encouragement to run; 37 percent of women versus 43 percent of men received a suggestion to run from someone in the political arena or their personal lives.

We also can't discount the fact that politics is an exceedingly tough -- often enthusiastically mean -- business. That is particularly true when you are on the outside trying to break in; even more so when you are young, female and underfunded.