Women have run for and been elected to public office at almost every level of government except for president, and there's been a national buzz about a woman as a serious contender for the presidency for the first time in 2008.

But when it comes to the Roanoke City Council, women are still a rarity just in seeking that office.

In more than 100 years, only four women have served on the city's seven-member council, and no woman has served as mayor. The council members have been: the late Mary Pickett (1953-60); Elizabeth Bowles (1976-96); Linda Wyatt (1994-2004); and Brenda McDaniel, who will leave the council when her term ends in July. Only one woman, Gwen Mason, is running in the 10-candidate field vying for three council seats on May 2.

"That's kind of sad," said Sean T. O'Brien, executive director of the University of Virginia's Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership, of Roanoke's lack of female council membership.

O'Brien said there is more gender diversity among local elected bodies in other areas of Virginia, and he said the Sorensen Institute's college-level political programs frequently have more women participants than men.

And while that's true -- a number of other city councils and boards of supervisors across the state have two or more women members -- Virginia ranks in the bottom third nationally on women's political participation issues, according to the latest edition of The Status of Women in the States, a report of the Institute for Women's Policy Research.

Roanoke is certainly not alone in the region when it comes to a lack of women serving on local elected bodies. Some localities, such as Roanoke County and Salem, have had even less female representation.

Even in the New River Valley college town of Blacksburg, only five women have served on the Blacksburg Town Council since 1871, when the town was incorporated. The first councilwoman, Kathleen M. Wright, was elected in 1968 and served one term. In the nearly four decades since then, only four other women -- Frances M. Parsons, Rachel P. Brown, Louise M. Kassem and Joyce Lewis -- have been elected. Two candidates, Susan Anderson and Mary Holliman, hope to add more feminine names to the council history book on May 2.

In Roanoke, it's not as if the city is adverse to women in certain leadership posts -- Darlene Burcham is the appointed city manager, and the majority of the city's five elected constitutional officers are women.

And even though there have been few women council members, there has been at least one woman on the council for the past 30 years -- a streak that will end if Mason doesn't win a seat in May.

There's only been a single woman among the council's seven members except during 1994-96, when the terms of Wyatt and Bowles overlapped. So that means the female representation on the council has never mirrored the percentage of women in the city population, which is now 53 percent. Meanwhile, the city's black population of 27 percent has been better represented among the council's membership, as it is today when two of seven members are black, or 28 percent.

So what's behind the lack of women on the council?

Alice Hincker, the first party-backed woman to run for Roanoke mayor two years ago, said she knows at least one reason: There's still some old gender attitudes that exist.

Hincker, who finished third in a four-way race in 2004, said that she heard from several men who told her things like, "Oh honey, you'd be great on the school board," or "Honey, you might have done well with a [regular] council seat. Why did you run for mayor?"

She said comments like that were more prevalent than those in support of her being a woman. Hincker ran as a Republican, but said she's trying to decide whom to support between the Republican and Democratic candidates in this year's race. She said she is not supporting Mason or either of her two independent running mates, Councilman Alfred Dowe and David Trinkle. Even with the issues she faced while running, Hincker said a candidate's personality and stance on issues are more important than his or her gender.

The women who have served on the council -- Bowles, Wyatt and McDaniel -- said it is vitally important to them that the council's membership include a woman, if nothing more to add a female's perspective to its decisionmaking process.

"It shouldn't be all white men -- or all black men, for that matter," said McDaniel, an independent who is supporting Mason, Dowe and Trinkle.

Pickett, who died in 2001 at age 94, was the first woman to serve on Roanoke's council. In an interview years after she left office, she recalled that her male colleagues never really accepted her as a political equal. "They were sweet and kind and gentlemanly and they left me out of everything," Pickett said.

Bowles, now 85, served the longest among the four female Roanoke City Council members. In her political experiences, she said she does believe the council was better served by having at least one female member.

"Not that we're any better, but we see things a little differently," she said.

However, Bowles said she never got the sense that her gender was as important among voters as her business background or the issues she stood for, including the elimination of massage parlors along Williamson Road. Bowles met with Mason recently and the former councilwoman said the aspiring one is "a lovely person." But Bowles said she wonders if Mason, who moved to Roanoke with her husband and two children about five years ago, has enough name recognition to earn her a council seat.

Wyatt, a Democrat who was supported by the key public safety and teachers groups, said an all-male council is a turnoff in today's world, and could be an economic development deterrent because some may take a look at the lack of council gender diversity and say, "I don't want to move there. I don't want this chauvinistic form of government."

Wyatt, still an active member of the Democratic Party, did not give an opinion on Mason, mainly because the Democrats have a full slate of council candidates that includes David Bowers, Granger Macfarlane and William White Sr.

In a crowded 10-candidate field, the potential to grab some female support is not lost on Mason, 46.

A former manager in the U.S. Department of Interior and a self-described Democrat, Mason is running as an independent. She said many qualified women don't run for the council because of the emotional toll it takes plus the public vulnerability involved. But she said she's ready.

"I've been moved by the remarkable women who improve civic life in Roanoke every day," she said. "I see a real sisterhood of service and I'd like to contribute as a member of city council."

Staff writer Tonia Moxley contributed to this report.