THE GOOD NEWS is that there seems to be growing concern over the dearth of women in policy positions in state government. The appallingly low numbers mean we’re losing out on valuable talent and perspective when setting state policy.

The bad news is that we’re fixing blame in the wrong places.

We have too few female judges and college trustees and women elected to other positions by the Legislature, and so we get outraged at the Legislature — without noticing how rare it is for women to run for those posts. (Upcoming judicial elections are the exception, and could become our first real test of legislative acceptance of or hostility toward female candidates: Four of the 10 candidates who filed for two open seats on the Court of Appeals are women.)

We are appalled by the dearth of women in the Legislature, and so we blame the governor (who actually has made progress in the one arena he controls, increasing the number of women serving on boards and commissions, by 18 percent over his predecessor) — without counting how many women actually run for the House and Senate.

You don’t have to count very high.

In Richland and Lexington counties, five of the 23 candidates running in next month’s primaries are women; two are seeking the same seat. Add Kit Smith, who is unopposed in the primary but challenging Sen. John Courson in the fall, and the best women could do is wind up with five of the 28 legislative seats in Richland and Lexington counties. That’s a dramatic improvement over the current number — zero — but still disturbingly low.

The story is similar statewide: Women are running in seven of the 46 Senate districts and 24 of the 124 House districts. (Currently, two women serve in the Senate, 14 in the House.)

The problem is not unique to South Carolina, although it is pronounced here. Nor is it new. I’ve covered legislative races for 17 years, and women have never run in significant numbers.

When the nation had its vaunted “year of the woman” in 1992, and conventional wisdom held that being female gave candidates a leg up, just seven women filed to run for the state Senate; 36 ran for the S.C. House. In the end, women didn’t pick up a single seat in the State House — and voters turned out the state’s only congresswoman.

Candy Waites, who spent nearly two decades on the Richland County Council and in the House, directs Columbia College’s Community Leadership Program, which prepares young women for leadership roles.

She says the reasons women don’t run haven’t changed much since her first race, in 1976. The list tumbles off her tongue: “They’re not welcomed into the political arena. They don’t think of themselves as politicians. They have many other activities going on in their lives, from raising families to holding down jobs to pursuing their own personal interests.... It is a lot easier when you have some assistance from a spouse or a sympathetic employer or you do not have a family or your family has left the nest. Men don’t assume the same level of responsibility for those things as women do. They just don’t.

“So it’s very difficult for women to take on that extra role. I don’t think the traditional problem of raising money has gotten much better; I think it’s much easier for men, because of all their connections, to raise money. And I think maybe in the South there’s still that tradition that that’s not women’s role.”

The impediments to women offering for positions selected by the General Assembly are slightly different, but only slightly. And so the fix will be slightly different — but only slightly.

Other efforts might help a bit, but long-term, change must begin in places where young women are coming into their own, identifying their responsibilities and setting goals for their lives.

While the Columbia College’s Leadership Institute doesn’t push women toward government, Ms. Waites says, “you hope that that will be the next step, to realize they have the skills and the responsibility” to get involved.

But hoping isn’t enough. She suggests as a model the recent campaign that turned public opposition to the Columbia convention hotel into a force that made the City Council reconsider: “We had to reach out and take people by the hand and say these are the steps you have to take, these are the names of the City Council members and their phone numbers, and here are some words you might want to consider using in letters. It may be that we need more encouragement, we need more guidance, that this is how you do it, you have a responsibility to make your voice heard, you have a responsibility to serve in public office, here are some of the tools.”

Ms. Waites, a Democrat, prefers candidates whose politics are similar to her own, but she makes a point of encouraging smart young women of all political persuasions; one of the two recent alumnae she mentions as especially promising potential candidates is a Republican, currently serving a White House internship.

That bipartisan approach is too often missing from recruitment efforts, which have come almost exclusively from left of center. But it is key to any significant change. As long as the people casting the ballots — be they in the general public or the General Assembly — trend Republican, Democrats of either sex (or, for that matter, race) start out at a decided disadvantage.

Ms. Scoppe can be reached at cscoppe@thestate.com or at (803) 771-8571