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By MYRON B. PITTS

The news that Gov. Bev Perdue will not seek re-election came as a shock.

Unless Perdue is beating some scandal out the door, I think she’s being a little hasty. Polls had her losing by 11 to 14 points to Republican Pat McCrory, but I’ve seen bigger deficits erased. And most folks haven’t yet tuned in to the race.

Sources close to Perdue told Politico.com that she did not make the move out of pressure from Democrats in Raleigh or Washington. But I wonder.

North Carolina is a swing state, so I would not put it past the national party to do some arm-twisting out of worry Perdue could drag down the ticket. News of her decision hit The Washington Post website first.

Either way, her decision shows she does not have a big ego. You’d have to drag most politicians out of a governor’s mansion, either by ballot or by lawmen.

Her move, however, does fit with what we think we know of the state’s first female governor.

“She’s a very pragmatic woman,” said the source to Politico.

She has always been a party person, too — a loyal trouper for the Democrats.

She came up in what can be called the machine of former Gov. Mike Easley, and like many women on the rise in any institution, she crossed her t’s and dotted her i’s.

She bided her time, ran when it was her turn and pulled out a squeaker in 2008 against McCrory in a year where Obama fervor maxed out Democratic votes.

She inherited a hot mess in the state’s economy but has done a decent job, despite stiff opposition from an aggressive Republican-led General Assembly.

I think Perdue gets kind of a hard road, too, because she’s a woman. It’s just my gut that folks are a little bit harder on her than they might be on a man facing the same bleak economic numbers.

I want to be careful with that. Voters knew her gender when they elected her, and it didn’t matter enough to defeat her. Female politicians at the top are still relatively rare.

Although their numbers in Congress have tripled in the past 20 years, the U.S. still ranks No. 82 in terms of the percentage of women in the national legislature. Just 72 of 435 representatives are female, and 17 of 100 senators, including North Carolina’s Kay Hagan.

Perdue is one of only six women serving as a governor, three having been elected in 2011, including South Carolina Republican Nikki Haley.

There are many reasons for the low numbers.

A big one is that the bulk of household, child-rearing and family roles still falls on women, which would limit time for campaigning.

As relates to big-time politics, it’s not hard to spot another reason for the low number of female candidates: The ruthless maneuvering required to be successful might not appeal to a gender that society rewards for showing a softer side and punishes for playing hardball.

Nowhere is that cost more evident than in one who sought the top rung on the political ladder, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Clinton might one day be known as the political figure whose initial public persona was the most wildly divergent from who she actually is.

Although she was cast by opponents as low, conniving and disloyal, her life and career have shown she is loyal to a fault and a team player. She stuck with a philandering husband; helped raise an accomplished, confident daughter; waited patiently behind arguably lesser Democratic candidates for president in 2004; and would later serve in the administration of the man who beat her in a hard-fought primary in 2008.

Even Clinton’s acceptance of President Obama’s invitation to serve as secretary of state tells us something about her.

Remember the toughest campaign ad she ran against him, the famous “3 a.m. phone call” TV commercial? In it, a serious-sounding voice-over asks whether the junior senator would be ready when the White House phone rang in the wee hours with a crisis from somewhere in the world.

As secretary of state, Clinton herself has been the very person who makes that call to the president.

This is no coincidence.

Whether or not her campaign critique of him was fair, she clearly had an honest concern and decided, rather than wait for an “I told you so” as many politicians would, she would help out.

In what must be a bittersweet irony, her current approval ratings far exceed those of Obama.

The same day that Perdue made her announcement, Clinton said for the umpteenth time she would step out of the daily grind after Obama’s first term.

She told a reporter: “I think after 20 years — and it will be 20 years — of being on the high wire of American politics and all of the challenges that come with that, it would be probably a good idea to just find out how tired I am.”

But Hillary Clintons, and even Bev Perdues, are not handed out at the convenience store. Top female politicians must be located and cultivated by both parties, just like their male counterparts.

This recruitment will present unique challenges. For instance, just 40 percent of well-qualified women believe they have what it takes to seek office, whereas 60 percent of men with similar qualifications feel that way, according to a study by Brown University professor Jennifer Lawless.

So we’re back to ego.

The image we have of most politicians is that they have too much, but that’s only when we’re looking at one gender.

Myron B. Pitts is a columnist for the Fayetteville Observer.