I absolutely cringe when women are not given the credit that
they are due. This was the case when
Mitt Romney left the impression in the Presidential debate on Tuesday evening that
HE was the driving force in initiating a drive to find qualified women to
appoint to his cabinet. NOT True. Furthermore, his track record on increasing
women’s representation in his cabinet did NOT hold during his tenure as
governor. Here are the facts:
1. Romney gave the impression during Tuesday night’s
debate that HE was the driving impetus behind collecting the binders of resumes
in search for qualified women to hold cabinet positions. This is NOT
TRUE. The Massachusetts Government
Appointments Project (MassGAP), a bipartisan coalition of over 40 women’s
groups whose purpose is to increase the number of women appointed by the governor
to senior level cabinet positions, put together the resumes PRIOR to the
gubernatorial election . Prior to the election MassGAP asked both the Democratic
and Republican(Romney) candidates at that time to sign a pledge that if elected
they would increase the number of females in the senior level positions. So Romney didn’t even give women credit, where
credit is due, in initiating the campaign to increase women’s representation in
government---instead he took it for himself.
2.
An independent study by the University of Massachusetts,
commissioned by MassGAP provides the results of THEIR effort to increase women’s
representation in government. And guess
what? Romney’s track record on women appointed
to senior level positions DOESN’T hold.
Here are the results . During the initial response to the MassGAP
initiative (2002-2004) 14 of Romney’s first 33 appointments (42 percent) to
senior level positions were women. From
2004-2006, however, at the end of Romney's term, women made up just 25
percent of the 64 new appointments.
3. The
report’s conclusions state that “MassGAP’s
early impact---with then-Governor Romney selecting women as 42% of his new
appointments---was promising. However,
the analysis in this report suggest that subsequent appointments did not
reflect in a continued commitment to
the selection of women for high-level posts.
The net result over the four points in time suggest that women’s gains
between 2002 and 2006 were elusive: women at the end of the Romney
administration did not hold a higher percentage of senior-level positions than
when he took office. “ The principal
reason for this, according to the report, is that Romney placed men in positions previously held by women more
often than he placed women in positions previously held by men.
Romney’s attribution that he was the driving force in increasing
women’s representation in appointed government positions, and not MassGAP, is as self-serving as one can get. Leaving the impression that he had a stellar
record in maintaining women’s advancement in senior level positions throughout
his tenure as governor is simply a misrepresentation of his record.
“We love you women!” You be the judge.
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