Binders Full of Women: Gender in the Governors' Cabinets

I'm not the only woman seriously irked by Governor Romney's story at the last debate about having asked for "binders full of women" when he objected (or so he claimed) to the fact that his aides had brought him only names of men as possible appointees. First, as it has now come out, he did not "go to various women's groups." One non-partisan coalition of women's groups, MassGap, which had been working for some time to get more women in top government jobs, came to Romney with binders they had put together themselves. That is the factual account--not the mendacious pile of fudge that Romney tried to pass off on voters on Tuesday. Of course as the entire social network universe knows his "binders full of women" became the meme of the week with one inspired blogger soliciting and posting hilarious takes making fun of the expression. My favorite--and it was really hard to chose-- is Hillary Clinton in her sunglasses peering into her phone with the caption "Romney still uses binders? LOL"

So thinking about these binders of women I thought it might be fun to take a look at a couple of Governor's cabinets. First up, Ohio's Governor John Kasich. Kasich's Cabinet has 21 men and 5 women (one, the Lt. Governor, is elected). As I suspected, on closer look, there appear to be some possible race and gender tokenism going on in the group. No surprise that one of the women heads the Office of Aging Services and another Mental Health. I'll leave it to you to guess who among the men and women are likely to be African American (hint, look at the agency title). As you would expect all such groups that report directly to the guy in elected office are hierarchical and have a clear pecking order. Those who work with the money--Management and Budget--for example, will be at the top of the heap, those who are responsible for service provision at the bottom. Based on their positions and the level of authority they have over actual financial and other resources Kasich's cabinet could be arranged according to probable importance to him. If I had time to dig deeper I could arrange them according to agency budgets and find similar patterns. 

Now for another swing state governor, Scott Walker of Wisconsin. I was not able to find a neat listing of his cabinet but this news article from the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal-Sentinel about Walker's initial appointments is perhaps even more telling. Fourteen members, three women. And yep, two of the women are in the "girl" jobs, Tourism, and Children and Families.

I could go on. And I know I would find similar patterns irrespective of the party affiliation of the governor. My hope is that this whole affair will wake up some of those men and women in higher office that many of us women are well-qualified for cabinet positions and not just those that are the traditional girl jobs. Me (I have an MBA BTW), I want that finance and budget position. And I'll send you my cv via email.

At just this moment I got a robocall from Todd Akin for Senate. If he has a job to offer. I think I'll pass.