This year women leaders are not seeing great advancements.

First two prominent women, Honolulu Police Chief Susan Ballard, after receiving a highly critical performance report from the Honolulu Police Commission, said she was quitting.

And Christina Kishimoto, superintendent of the state Department of Education, said last month she would not ask for a second term. Her action comes as members of the teachers’ union and parents had asked that she not be reappointed.

On a political level, 32.9% of the Hawaii legislative seats are filled by women, about the same as it had been a decade ago.

Hawaii has had one female governor, Republican Linda Lingle, and Honolulu has had one female mayor, Eileen Anderson.

So it is good to look back at the career of a strong women leader from Hawaii who led a successful career with statewide and national prominence.

Pat Saiki titled her just-completed autobiography “Woman in the House.” It looks back at her career in the state House and Senate, Congress and head of the federal Small Business Administration.

It’s an easy-to-read, 188-page review of her work. It gives some insight into running a campaign in Hawaii, local style, the special challenges women face, and some of the impetus and reason why people run for office in the first place.

None of it is easy. Saiki first ran for the state House with five children ages 6 to 14. She was motivated by her own internal sense of what is right. A schoolteacher who saw the need for change and helped organize public school teachers in the Hawaii Government Employees Association, before a teachers’ union was created, provided an early lesson in organizing. Although repeatedly asked to run as a Democrat, Saiki chose the decidedly more difficult path and ran as a Republican, after having worked for several years for Republicans in the state Legislature.

“I believe in the Republican principles of limited government, individual freedom and fiscal responsibility,” she wrote.

Saiki, now 91, launched her political career by winning a seat in the state Constitutional Convention in 1968, determined to be a force for meaningful change.

“The overt discrimination my husband and I faced when we were denied home ownership, the changes I knew were needed in the educational system and my own experience with schoolteacher mistreatment” were the reasons cited for her getting into politics.

Saiki comes from the liberal wing of the GOP. Discussing the issue of abortion, Saiki recounted how she would help her late husband, Dr. Stanley Saiki, a surgeon specializing in obstetrics and gynecology who would get calls late at night from patients bleeding profusely from illegal abortions.

Fearing that turning on the office lights would alert police to suspicious activities, Saiki would hold a lamp to help her husband patch up the women.

While saying she was not in favor of full-scale legalization of abortion, Saiki was “outraged that a trained physician and his patient could be unfairly exposed to prosecution. The woman deserved better, she shouldn’t be punished for making a difficult choice, she certainly shouldn’t be exposed to unsanitary medical practices by an illegal abortionist.” In 1970, Hawaii became the first state in allow women to legally request an abortion.

Along the way Saiki made friends with Democrats, including former Gov. John A. Burns, the driving force in creating the modern Hawaii Democratic Party, saying, “he offered to help me in my district.” Saiki and Burns were working for the same goal of creating a medical school for the University of Hawaii and they formed a ready alliance.

Saiki was the first Republican ever elected to serve in the U.S. House from Hawaii, the second woman in the state elected to Congress.

She helped spearhead the 1988 civil rights protection act that included an official apology to Japanese-American families interned during World War II. Saiki argued the bill in front of the GOP caucus, calling the internment “bipartisan racism.”

Along the way, Saiki also lost races for the U.S. Senate and governor — still, she offers a lot of guidance and encouragement for a hard-fought political life.

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays. Reach him at 808onpolitics@gmail.com.