The number of women involved in state governments has dropped after steadily increasing for three decades.

After last November’s elections, the number of female state legislators dropped by 35. A similar decline happened in the 2000 election, and now there are only 1,645 women in a body of 7,382 state legislators across the country.

Robin Read, president of the National Foundation for Women Legislators, said Wisconsin was setting a good example because it has women serving as lieutenant governor, attorney general and Senate majority leader during a time of decline for women in state, elected offices.

Read said term limits and redistricting contributed to the decline of elected women officials.

“The impact of term limits and the consistent loss of women legislators every time there is redistricting is the biggest reason for this year’s decline,” Read said.

Read said when a state’s legislative districts change, the combined or realigned district often results in two women running against each other or the loss of a female legislator.

“It doesn’t matter which party has control of the state,” Read said.

Read said term limits affect women in particular because the average female state legislator is seven years older than her male counterpart.

“We find that the women are, on average, seven years older, not because they’re having kids and waiting,” Read said. “It’s because women who have an interest to run for office want to wait until they’re completely prepared for the office.”

Read said that although NFWL’s studies have shown female legislators spend more time preparing for office, they are still subject to term limits.

“In state after state great women are leaving,” Read said. “Not every state has term limits, but the ones that do are losing great women in numbers.”

Read said she could not comment on whether young girls were receiving encouragement to seek public office as a career choice because the NFWL’s charge is to work with women who are currently in office.

In Wisconsin, Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton said she did see this as a problem.

“To hold the second-most prominent position in state government as a woman is to encourage more young women to imagine themselves in all positions of government,” Lawton said. “I didn’t grow up seeing myself doing that because there weren’t any women doing that at the time.”

Lawton was the first elected female lieutenant governor in Wisconsin. The state also inaugurated its first female attorney general last month.

In Wisconsin, women hold eight of 33 seats in the state Senate and 28 of 99 seats in the state Assembly. Together, women hold 26 percent of the seats in Wisconsin’s Legislature, which is slightly higher than the national average of 22 percent.

Women did not gain any seats in the U.S. Congress as a result of the November 2002 elections and increased their presence in the Senate by one when former Senator Frank Murkowski was elected governor of Alaska and appointed his daughter Lisa to carry out the remainder of his Senate term.