The number of women in state government leadership positions is on the rise around the country, but the researchers say Idaho is lagging behind the trend.

Gov. Butch Otter's office counters that 23 of 58 agency heads are women, about 40 percent, and that so are half of his senior policy advisers.

Of the top governor-appointed posts in all 50 states last year, 35 percent were held by women, up from 28 percent a decade earlier, according to the report by the Center for Women in Government & Civil Society at the University at Albany.

In six states, women hold about half the leadership spots.

In Idaho, though, fewer than one in four of the appointments studied had gone to women, though they make up half of the state's population.

Three of Idaho Gov. Butch Otter's key departments - Agriculture, Environmental Quality and Transportation - are run by women. But Administration, Commerce, Correction, Juvenile Corrections, Finance, Health and Welfare, Insurance, Lands, Parks and Recreation, Water Resources and the Idaho State Police are all headed by men.

One of the seven appointed State Board of Education members is a woman. All seven Fish and Game commissioners and all three members of the Idaho Industrial Commission are men. Women do make up half of the four-person Idaho Tax Commission.

But Otter's spokesman Jon Hanian points out that a deeper look at the governor's office and the next tier of Idaho agencies shows a different picture.

Twelve of the 23 people in Otter's office are women, he said, as are half of Otter's six senior policy advisors.

And of the 58 top appointed directors, 23 are women - that includes Office of Drug Policy Director Debbie Field, State Appellate Public Defender Molley Huskey, and other heads of smaller, self-governing state agencies.

Hanian said he wasn't sure what appointments the researchers looked at, but he didn't think the study "really is an accurate representation."

Meanwhile, the state with the most top jobs held by women was Idaho's next-door neighbor Montana.

Researchers in the national study looked at the number of women named to top-ranking policy positions such as heads of state agencies and senior advisers and found that while women remain generally underrepresented, they've made significant strides in key areas.

"The most important thing is the fact that in 36 of the states, women are doing better than they were in 1997, and by better, I mean as a comparison of the percentage of women in leadership posts compared with the percentage of women in the state," said Judith Saidel, the lead author and the center's director.

Saidel said the rising numbers could be attributed in part to the general strides women have made in the private sector and academia, along with a growing number of women in high-level career public servant positions who are now in line for promotions.

In Alaska, Connecticut, Montana, Nevada, Vermont and Washington, the number of women in senior policy positions is roughly even with their percentage of the general population in those states, the study found.

Although three of those states - Alaska, Connecticut and Washington - also have female governors, the research didn't show that women governors are generally more inclined than men to appoint female staff and advisers, Saidel said.

Montana is the only state where the percentage of women in top state government positions - 54.5 - actually exceeds that of women in the state's population - 50.2.

Three of Montana's neighboring states - South Dakota, Wyoming and Idaho - are at the other end of the scale. They are among just four states - the other is Louisiana - where women hold fewer than a quarter of the top state jobs. In South Dakota, only about one in every six state leadership jobs were held by women.

Cara Eastwood, press secretary for Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal, said Wyoming faces a challenge finding qualified people to fill top jobs because the state's economy is booming and government has to compete with high-paying private sector employers.

The university study found that agencies in areas where women have traditionally been better represented - including health, human rights and education - still have the highest number of women leaders.

At the same time, it found a growing number of women breaking into areas traditionally dominated by men, including administration and budget. For example, Laura Anglin is New York's budget director.

Former Vermont Gov. Madeline Kunin, a Democrat who served from 1985 until 1991 and was the state's first female governor, was heartened to hear of the strides women have made. She noted that some of her appointments "raised some eyebrows" because they didn't have the typical resumes of traditional candidates for the job.

"If a woman had 10 years that she stayed at home with her family, a traditional assessment would have been that she did nothing in those years," Kunin said. "My assessment was different because I know when I was home with my kids, I was active in the schools and community organizations, and, of course, you learn a great deal from bringing up children."

As the number of women in high-ranking state policy positions rises, Kunin hopes, there eventually won't be a need to study the issue because it will become generally accepted that women belong in those jobs.

Gregory Hahn of the Idaho Statesman contributed to this story.