Since 1992, called "The Year of the Woman" because of a historic influx of women in the House, the number of women running for state legislative office has dipped from 2,375 to 2,220 in last year's elections, according to statistics kept by the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Political analysts and female lawmakers attribute the steady decline to cultural biases and term limits.

Women's groups fear that unless more women run for state legislatures -- which have served as a political springboard for statewide and federal campaigns for politicians, such as Republican Olympia Snowe, Maine's senior senator -- female representation in higher levels of government will stagnate or decline.

"Even though we've made significant gains, it's a mile wide and an inch deep," said Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat who made the jump last year from the state Legislature to Congress. "There has not been enough focus on building women leaders to replace us" when female state legislators move up to higher office, she said.

"It is troubling to see this declining trend. If anything, the trend should be increasing," Snowe said. "It's the 21st century. I didn't expect it to be taking a U-turn."

Compared with the 1990s, specialists on women in politics say, the importance of national security issues and continued perceptions among some voters -- as well as some potential female candidates -- that women should be caring for their families have limited participation.

"One of the negative stereotypes that hurts women candidates is national security," said Harrison Hickman, who did polling for Democratic senatorial candidate Inez Tenenbaum, who lost a 2004 race in South Carolina. "I don't think there's any question but that the national security issue on the agenda made it more difficult for [Tenenbaum] to run this year."

But he said the landscape could change if the public's priorities shift to such matters as Social Security and Medicaid. The national worry over healthcare and economic security helped women in 1992, he said, and next year, "you could see a gathering storm on the horizon that could be beneficial to women."

Women comprise a record 14.8 percent of Congress, with 79 seats, and have risen to leadership positions in recent years. But analysts say no female challenger won a US Senate seat last year, and the percentage of women holding statewide elected office, such as governors, attorneys general, and US senators, has dropped since 1999, from 27.6 percent to 25 percent this year.

"We're really kind of stuck," said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics. "What keeping them from running? That's the issue we're worried about."

If more women do not start running for lower-level office, "we're not going to see the trickle-up we want to see," she said.

Political analysts and women's advocates attribute the trend to voters and the candidates themselves.

"I do think that for certain folks, my being a woman may have been a factor in their reason not to vote for me," said Representative Stephanie Herseth, a South Dakota Democrat. "When national security is a focus, there's a tendency to be more comfortable with male candidates."

Also, women themselves seem to be less confident of their ability to serve in elected office, even when they have the same qualifications on paper as a man, Walsh said.

Research published in the American Journal of Political Science and cited by the center indicated that men are more likely to come to an independent conclusion that they will run for office, while women must be persuaded to do so. The statistics indicated that 11 percent of women run for state legislative office on their own initiative, compared with 37 percent of male candidates. Conversely, 18 percent of male candidates had to be talked into running, while 37 percent of women needed to be recruited.

"Most women don't wake up and say, 'I'm going to run for the Senate someday.' Men do," said Karen White, political director of EMILY's List, which funds Democratic female candidates.

Pat Carpenter, president of WISH List, which promotes abortion rights for Republican female candidates, said she had found that many women were running successful businesses and had not thought about running for office. Alarmed by the drop-off in female candidates, both EMILY's List and WISH List have expanded their missions in recent years to recruit women to run for lower-level offices and to train them to conduct campaigns.

Family obligations, too, affect the number of women running for office, analysts and female officials say, but they note that the barrier may come more from the public's impression of mothers or single women in office than from the women's competing demands of family and lawmaking.

"Certainly, there continue to be issues for women in all careers as they struggle to balance work and family obligations," said former governor Jane Swift, who gave birth to twins while in office. "There is some research [showing] that people perceive that women with young children won't be as committed to a political job."

Wasserman Schultz said her opponent, a woman, tried to suggest she was a "bad mother" for running for Congress when she had three small children. The effort backfired, said Wasserman Schultz, who won the seat handily.

Women's success in getting elected to a state legislature does not seem to be connected to whether the state votes Democratic or Republican. According to statistics compiled by the Center for American Women and Politics, states that tend to vote for Democrats are not generally more expected to elect women to a state legislature than conservative-leaning states. Republican states including Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho all have a higher percentage of female state legislators than do Massachusetts and New York, for example. With a Legislature that is 24.5 percent female, Massachusetts ranks 20th in the nation in the representation of women in the State House.

But the pool of female candidates is shrinking, and the existence of term limits in 17 states means that it is even more critical to bring new female candidates into the mix, Walsh said. Female incumbents, like their male counterparts, are better positioned to win than challengers, but when incumbents are barred from running again, political parties and activists need to find more women ready and able to run for those jobs, she said.

Female lawmakers and political recruiters said the parties and elected women themselves need to work harder to recruit more women to run.

Wasserman Schultz said she made a point of recruiting another woman to run for her seat in the state Legislature when term limits required her to leave. That candidate won.

"My attitude is, I've gotten where I want to go through hard work and through a lot of help and positive support around me," she said. "Many women are so focused on getting themselves up the ladder, they forget to reach behind them."