WASHINGTON -- The enlarged photo that congressional candidate Susan Brooks displays at some of her events shows not Brooks, but Cecil Murray Harden, the last -- and only -- Republican woman from Indiana to serve in Congress.

Harden left Congress more than half a century ago.

"In my lifetime, there's never been a Republican woman (from Indiana) in Congress," says former state Rep. Jackie Walorski, 48, who is also running for a House seat. "I think it's kind of weird."

Only 17 percent of federal lawmakers are women, a rate that ranks behind 77 countries, including Afghanistan, Cuba and Nepal, in the percentage of women in the national legislature.

And the percentage of women serving in the U.S. House dropped after the 2010 elections, the first decline since 1978.

But this year's elections could bring a bumper crop of women to Washington. A notable number of candidates running in competitive House and Senate races could make 2012 another "Year of the Woman." That moniker was famously applied in 1992 when four new women were elected to the Senate, a high-water mark for the chamber that has not been surpassed.

"Both parties have made a concerted effort to attract more women candidates," said Jessica Taylor, a senior analyst for the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report. Taylor said campaign operations understand female candidates can be particularly appealing because independent female voters are often a decisive voting bloc in elections.

In the last presidential election year, 61 percent of eligible Hoosier women voted, compared with 57 percent of eligible men.

Indiana is one of 27 states that have never elected a woman to the Senate and one of 20 that have no women in its current delegations to the House and Senate. Five Hoosier women have served in the House. The last was Democratic Rep. Julia Carson, who died in office in 2007.

Of the 61 major-party candidates running for the House from Indiana, seven are women. Of those, Walorski and Brooks are in the best position to win, although both are in competitive races.

Walorski, Jimtown, is running to succeed Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly in north-central Indiana, a swing district that likely will be targeted by the national parties. Brooks is one of seven Republicans running in the heavily GOP Central Indiana district seat held by retiring Rep. Dan Burton, R-Indianapolis.

Walorski, who narrowly lost to Donnelly in 2010, has raised the most campaign funds of any non-incumbent from Indiana. Brooks has raised the second-most.

In Brooks' first campaign ad, she draws immediate attention to being the only female candidate in her race.

"I'm running against some good guys," she says in her first words to the camera, before criticizing some of those guys for having run for office multiple times.

Brooks, 51, Carmel, said the ad's opening line highlights her gender "because people don't have the opportunity to see us all together."

More than her gender, Brooks said, she's emphasizing the difference in her career path, which includes being a partner in a small law firm, serving as deputy mayor of Indianapolis, serving as a U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Indiana, and being vice president and general counsel for Ivy Tech Community College.

"I think that my combination of experiences is what I believe has given me the confidence to run for Congress, particularly my last four years at working at Ivy Tech and working in the area of workforce training and economic development and job creation," she said. "I believe it's taken me this long in my career path to feel that I am highly qualified to be a member of Congress."

It's that lack of confidence in being qualified that is a main reason more women haven't run for office, according to a recent survey of about 4,000 lawyers, business leaders, educators and political activists conducted by two political science professors. The study found a substantial gender gap in political ambition among both Democrats and Republicans.

"It may well be that women undervaluing their qualifications is a product of them not knowing that when women run for office, they do as well as men," said Jennifer Lawless, an associate professor of government at American University who co-authored the study.

Harden recognized the same problem in 1949, telling the Washington Post that women wouldn't make real progress in politics until they developed a genuine conviction of their own worth.

"We must feel in our hearts that women are as competent to assess problems and meet situations as men," she said.

Anne Hathaway, president of an Indianapolis political consulting firm, said women still approach running for office very differently from men.

"If you say to a guy, 'Would you be interested in running?' he says yes without looking at the whole big picture," Hathaway says. "A woman immediately thinks, 'Oh, I'm not qualified. I don't know enough. I need to think about it,' and works to make sure that she's qualified."

Other reasons the survey identified for women seeking office less often than men include:

Women are encouraged less often than men to run for office.

Women are still responsible for the majority of child-care and household tasks.

Women are more risk-averse.

Women react more negatively to many aspects of modern campaigns.

"Having been inside of a congressional race and three state House races, I'm not surprised that women don't sign up for the task, especially watching what happens sometimes to women who do sign up," Walorski said. "I would use both Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton as examples of women at the federal level who endured things that were just horrific -- and that's probably one reason why women shut the door and say, 'There is no way I'm going to put myself or my family through that.' "

There are many efforts to encourage and prepare women to run for office, including a recently launched Political Parity national campaign aimed at doubling the number of women serving as governors and members of Congress in 10 years.

Led by former U.S. Ambassador to Austria Swanee Hunt, a Democrat, and former Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, a Republican, the campaign is working with women's groups to build relationships with one another, share strategies, conduct research and motivate campaign donors.

In Indiana, the Richard C. Lugar Excellence in Public Service Series has worked since 1989 to cultivate Republican women's involvement in government and politics. More than 400 women have gone through the program, and there are graduates in the state House, in mayor's offices, in Gov. Mitch Daniels' administration and elsewhere.

Hathaway runs the Lugar series and serves on the board of the Women's Campaign School at Yale University, a leadership program intended to increase the number of women in government. Applications to the program dropped last year but are growing this year.

"We're trying to discuss whether it's because it's a presidential year and there's more discussion (of government and politics) or why," Hathaway said. "I don't think we know yet."

Other advocates for increasing women's participation in politics say the problem isn't ambition but identifying public policy issues women care about.

"Women come into politics because there's a pressing issue they want to solve," said Debbie Walsh, director of the Rutgers University Center for American Women and Politics.

In addition to being given the photo of Harden from the former congresswoman's family to inspire her campaign, Brooks is getting volunteer help from Harden's great-granddaughter, Betsy, who sometimes introduces Brooks at campaign events.

Both Brooks and Walorski said they've gotten encouragement from women officeholders, and they feel compelled to encourage other women to run.

"I was reading a book to a preschool last week, and I was telling some of the little girls that you can grow up to be president of this country. And one little girl was like, 'I'm going to!' " Walorski said. "And I was like, 'You know what? That's great.' Mission accomplished."

Contact Star Washington Bureau reporter Maureen Groppe at (202) 906-8118 or at mgroppe@ gannett.com.