The binder full of women

I'm not going to criticize Romney for using the phrase "binder full of women" at the debate last night. In using the phrase to to mean "binders full of resumes submitted by female job candidates" he is using a perfectly legitimate shortcut. However, the rest of his little anecdote was not without it's serious problems:

From the rush transcript: 

CROWLEY: Governor Romney, pay equity for women?

ROMNEY: Thank you. An important topic, and one which I learned a great deal about, particularly as I was serving as governor of my state, because I had the chance to pull together a cabinet and all the applicants seemed to be men. 

And I -- and I went to my staff, and I said, "How come all the people for these jobs are -- are all men." They said, "Well, these are the people that have the qualifications." And I said, "Well, gosh, can't we -- can't we find some -- some women that are also qualified?" [DB: Why are the governor and his staff having such trouble finding qualified women? Why weren't any of those qualified women part of his brain trust int he first place? Did he not come across any during his years of buying and strip-mining companies?]

And -- and so we -- we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. 

I went to a number of women's groups and said, "Can you help us find folks," and they brought us whole binders full of women. [DB: Ok, this just sounds awful. He's a titan of industry who can't find any good women? Oh, and more bad news: The whole story is a lie. The women groups came to him. He didn't go to them.] 

I was proud of the fact that after I staffed my Cabinet and my senior staff, that the University of New York in Albany did a survey of all 50 states, and concluded that mine had more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America. [DB: As noted here, not one of those women ran a department that mattered. The juicy portfolios - budget, business development, etc - went to men.]

Now one of the reasons I was able to get so many good women to be part of that team was because of our recruiting effort. [DB: "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.)"]

Now most Orthodox Jews, unfortunately,  agree with Romney that women don't really belong in the workplace. So, this story isn't going to get much traction in our community 

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