Sen. Patty Murray played the female card the other day, saying that if only there were more women in Congress, Washington, D.C., would not be so politically gridlocked.

She could be right, but Murray's 12-member supercommittee on deficit reduction was the epitome of partisan stalemate — and she was one of the leaders.

She argues it would have been less snarled if there were more women in the group.

Let's not be too naive. What's really going on is Murray took off her hat as co-chair of the deficit-reduction committee and switched to headgear befitting the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which she chairs. That means more attention to up-and-coming women (and men) running for office.

One of her jobs in 2012 is to get female Senate candidates elected in places like Hawaii, Wisconsin, Nevada, Massachusetts and North Dakota.

But there is a kernel of truth in Murray's comments, which is why she can get away with generalizations likely to offend male counterparts.

"I've been here a long time," Murray said. "Women in the room are much more task oriented. They are willing to make tough decisions. They want to get the job done, rather than having it be a political debate for years ... .

"You want the practical answer to why we would get things done? Because we are multitaskers: We have to pick up the kids and get dinner and, you know, help with the homework and get things done, and we don't mess around. And so we come into politics the same way: We have a task, it's hard, but we make decisions, and we get things done."

News flash to the senator: Men in 2011 are increasingly involved in raising the children, cooking, cleaning and so on. But women still do more of the above, according to the American Time Use Survey. It shows, for example, that on an average day, 20 percent of men do housework while 51 percent of women clean or do laundry.

I think Murray's more-women-more-of-the-time advocacy depends on the type of feminine pol she is speaking of. If she is referring to flexible moderates like Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, or even Murray herself at times — she and Collins worked across the aisle on port-security legislation — she has a point.

To my mind, this is far more about political moderation than gender, but the two converge in the U.S. Senate.

Of 25 so-called centrist members of the Senate ranked by the nonpartisan National Journal, nine (or 36 percent) were women, but only 17 of 100 senators (17 percent) are female. By this count, women are doing more than their share of working in the middle.

Jennifer Duffy, senior editor at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, says Murray wrongly implies that rising female Senate candidates are all Democrats. Republicans have viable female candidates, too, in places like Hawaii, New Mexico and Connecticut. (While we are at it, not all of the candidates Murray is promoting are moderates by any stretch.)

Female senators have a quarterly, sometimes monthly, bipartisan dinner. Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand of New York recently told The New York Times she found herself seated next to Republican Collins at one of these dinners during the fiscal battle in Congress.

"She touched my arm and said, 'Kirsten, if you and I were negotiating the budget we would have gotten it done a week ago.' " Gillibrand clearly agrees with Murray.

One can generalize that women are less obsessed with the need to win. Consider the adage that sometimes you win by losing. If a politician gives up something he or she wants in favor of compromise, that meeting in the middle becomes more of a win than the fact that no ground was yielded.

I may be letting the senator from Washington off too easily — I'm compromising, I'm compromising — but it is true that Congress needs more moderate players. If women are more likely to fill that bill on the Democratic or Republican side, bring them on.

Joni Balter's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her email address is jbalter@seattletimes.com