Last week, as part of our new "One Question" series, we asked Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jay Inslee about his jobs plan: Specifically, what will the plan, which focuses on "green" manufacturing, industrial, and construction jobs---fields overwhelmingly dominated by men---do for women? Women, after all, have reaped few benefits from the recovery, because fields dominated by women---things like health care, teaching, and government work---have not regained the jobs they lost.

Inslee's answer was that he supports training girls in traditionally male-dominated fields like engineering. A good start. But what about the girls and women who don't get that training, and don't end up in those fields? What about the girls and women who dominate government and other hard-hit fields now?

Last week, the New York Times provided a partial answer to that question: They're still losing out. While manufacturing added 25,000 jobs last month---the 10th consecutive month in which the manufacturing sector grew, adding 532,000 jobs over the past 30 months---state and local government lost 7,000 jobs. July was the 25th consecutive month of job losses for government workers over the last 30 months.

Overall, state and local governments have lost 499,000 workers over 30 months (those are seasonally adjusted numbers, meaning they don't count teachers who are unemployed over the summer among job losses).

According to the US Department of Labor, women make up about 60 percent of all state and local government workers, and just 29 percent of the manufacturing industry.