l33tminion: Not. This. Time. (Neobama)
Sam ([personal profile] l33tminion) wrote2012-10-19 06:08 pm
Entry tags:

On the "Binders" Gaffe

I was re-listening to the second presidential debate (specfically, Democracy Now!'s expanding the debate coverage), and what a change from the first! Very worth watching.

The exchange on women in the workplace in particular was worth some comment. I'm all in favor of giving props where props are due, so I'd thought that Mitt Romney's "binders" gaffe deserved some defense. Sure, Romney didn't use the best rhetoric in his opportunity to talk about the value of diversity in government and the ease of falling back on prejudice, his bit about work-family balance did make it seem that he thought of that as something only women require, and his comment about growing the economy so much that companies will be practically forced to hire women just makes his opinion of women seem not-that-positive. But if Romney was really that proactive about avoiding gender bias in his gubantorial administration, that would have been commendable.

Unfortunately, in addition to being badly stated, that anecdote seems to have been largely fictious (The Boston Phoenix via In These Times):

[...] in 2002 -- prior to the election [...] a bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government. [...]

They did the research and put together the binder full of women qualified for all the different cabinet positions, agency heads, and authorities and commissions. They presented this binder to Governor Romney when he was elected.

I have written about this before, in various contexts; tonight I've checked with several people directly involved in the MassGAP effort who confirm that this history as I've just presented it is correct -- and that Romney's claim tonight, that he asked for such a study, is false.

I will write more about this later, but for tonight let me just make a few quick additional points. First of all, according to MassGAP and MWPC, Romney did appoint 14 women out of his first 33 senior-level appointments, which is a reasonably impressive 42 percent. However, as I have reported before, those were almost all to head departments and agencies that he didn't care about -- and in some cases, that he quite specifically wanted to not really do anything. None of the senior positions Romney cared about -- budget, business development, etc. -- went to women.

Secondly, a UMass-Boston study found that the percentage of senior-level appointed positions held by women actually declined throughout the Romney administration, from 30.0% prior to his taking office, to 29.7% in July 2004, to 27.6% near the end of his term in November 2006. (It then began rapidly rising when Deval Patrick took office.)

[...]
(emphasis mine)