December 11, 2008: Cabinet Watch: 10 to three in race to 22 – Women Behind
For Immediate Release
December 11, 2008
Contact:
484-844-2996
Amy Siskind, The New Agenda – NewAgendaPress@yahoo.com
Cabinet Watch: 10 to three in race to 22 – Women Behind
Apparently unfazed by women’s outrage over White House speechwriter Jon Favreau’s brazenly posting on the Internet a picture of himself groping a cardboard cutout of Sen. Hillary Clinton, President-elect Barack Obama is on track to name fewer women to cabinet positions than either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush. The announcements of former Senator Tom Daschle to head Health and Human Services and Steven Chu to head Energy, bring the tally to 10 men and three women in a field of 22 cabinet-level positions.
“We are halfway through the transition period between election and inauguration – a good time to take stock of the message President-elect Obama is sending to the women of America,” said Amy Siskind, co-founder The New Agenda. “And here is the message: thanks for your vote; but you do not matter. In the first half of the transition period, you have given us Larry Summers, an unrepentant Favreau, and now a cabinet with only 23% women.”
The New Agenda is monitoring the cabinet selections for gender parity; visit our Cabinet Watch at www.thenewagenda.net.
“While the few women selected to serve on Obama’s cabinet are of high caliber and will no doubt contribute enormously to our nation, declaring real progress requires exceeding the 47 percent bar set by Clinton,” Siskind said.
Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both expanded the participation of women. In Clinton’s first term, he appointed seven women to cabinet level positions and Bush appointed five, according to Equal Representation in Government and Democracy. Presidents Carter and Reagan each appointed four. While welcome progress has been made in the past two administrations, it still does not reflect the fact that women comprise 52 percent of the population.
The United States lags behind much of the world when it comes to parity in political representation. The World Economic Forum ranks the U.S. 56th among 132 countries surveyed. This is lower than South Africa, Sri Lanka, and Latvia. In Europe, women are making substantial progress. Spain has become the first country to have more women in the cabinet than men. Nine women serve alongside eight men, including the country’s first woman defense minister. In releasing these rankings The Forum emphasized the importance of gender parity in reversing the current economic crisis and avoiding future downturns.
To reinforce the message that there is a rich pool of candidates, The New Agenda released the following bipartisan list of exemplary candidates for Cabinet positions. Three of those previously listed, Former State Dept. Asst. Secretary Susan Rice, New York Senator Hillary Clinton and Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, were tapped to be ambassador to the United Nations and heads of the Departments of State and Homeland Security.
- Founding executive director of American Rights at Work Mary Beth Maxwell
- Stanford University School Redesign Network director and head of Obama’s education transition team, Linda Darling-Hammond
- Founder of eBay Meg Whitman
- Former Hewlett- Packard CEO Carly Fiorina
- Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill
- Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar
- Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius
- Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm
- The first woman 4-star General Ann Dunwoody
- Wisconsin Lt. Governor Barbara Lawton
- FDIC head Sheila Blair
- Former U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Comm. Chair Brooksley E. Born
- Former President, Morgan Stanley, Zoe Cruz
- Princeton University economics professor Cecilia Elena Rouse
- Former Citigroup, Inc. executive Sallie Krawcheck
- IL Dept. of Veterans Affairs, Director Tammy Duckworth
- Former Head PA Dept. of Environmental Protection, Kathleen McGinty
- CA Air Resources Board, Mary Nichols
- Former NJ Dept. of Environmental Protection Lisa Jackson
Since our nation’s founding, 33 women have served in cabinet level positions, leaving an indelible mark on our nation’s social and economic policies. The first was Frances Perkins appointed by FDR as Secretary of Labor in 1933, where she played a key role writing New Deal legislation and chaired the committee which was responsible for creating the Social Security Act of 1935.
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