But for the rest of the summit, I was looking at one male face after another. In fact, I wasn’t even sure there were other women present until Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) spoke up a few hours in. Shortly thereafter, a camera pan caught Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA).

And that was it. Out of the more than 40 Congressional and federal representatives present at this major summit that will likely influence the direction of health care reform, we had exactly five women present. Tell me I’m not the only one who was disturbed by that.

Neither party (nor the White House) can make the argument that there were no women in Congress who were major players in the health care negotiations other than the ones present. Earlier this week, in fact, centrist Senators Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) released a joint statement promoting provisions of the bill impacting small businesses. Neither swing vote was invited. Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA), the architect of the original abortion compromise (one that would have actually preserved the present law), was nowhere in sight, and neither was fellow pro-choice advocate Rosa DeLauro (D-CT). Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) authored a women’s health amendmentthat passed in the Senate with bipartisan support, but was not present at the negotiating table.

Some will argue that the summit amounted to glorified political theater, and that who was present means little for the substance of the health care bill that will likely be passed through reconciliation. True, the legislation is probably not going to change much as a result of Thursday’s conversation, and political theater is a byproduct of any political event that is televised. But I’m of the mind that more women would have actually meant just a little less political theater and a little more cooperative and substantive discussion, even if the end result was not markedly different. For starters, the debate about abortion coverage would not have been limited to a factually inaccurate statement from House Minority Leader John Boehner that Pelosi was eventually able to rebut in her closing remarks.

Not only would this and the many other health care issues that uniquely impact women have gotten a little more face time, the whole spirit of the discussion, I believe, would have been at least marginally less talking-point-vs.-talking-point schlock. It’s not that women are less political than men (far from it), but throughout this long process, Congresswomen on both sides of the aisle have shown a more genuine willingness to work together on practical legislation, with less evident party posturing and more focus on solutions. (This is due in part to the fact that the Republican women in Congress are, on average, more moderate than the Republican men, making them likelier bipartisan allies; Snowe, for instance, co-sponsored the Mikulski amendment.) Watching the summit unfold, I couldn’t help but think that I would have much rather watched Snowe and Mikulski and Murray hash out the practical details of the bill than the showmanship that unfortunately characterized Thursday’s meeting.

We’ll never know what would have come of such a summit, of course. But if another bipartisan summit is to be had, those involved should think less about simply representing the two parties and more about the voices they need to include from within each party — including women.