Fact Check: Romney Lied about Binders Full of Women

[VirginiaTarheel]

Romney did not have a history of appointing women to high-level positions in the private sector. Romney did not have any women partners as CEO of Bain Capital during the 1980s and 1990s.

The venture capital and private equity fields were male-dominated, to be sure, especially during Romney’s time. Women started to break into the upper echelons of the firm after it started a hedge fund, called Brookside in 1996.

http://www.boston.com/politicalintelligence/2012/10/16/fact-check-romney-record-hiring-women/r3gqpykaQudNNqigmLZfuJ/story.html

[Warpy]

1. Apparently he was presented with ONE binder

containing the resumes of top level women in Mass. when he was building his governor's cabinet. He appointed a few here and there, mostly to lower level positions, and quite a few didn't make it to the end of his administration.

Since then, the number of women in Mass. government has climbed again.

[Beartracks]

2. So that's how he tried to fix the gender gap in one office in one state for 4 years.

What has he done to fix gender INEQUALITY throughout the COUNTRY for the FUTURE?

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[VirginiaTarheel]

3. Binders Full of Lies

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.)

Third, note that in Romney's story as he tells it, this man who had led and consulted for businesses for 25 years didn't know any qualified women, or know where to find any qualified women. So what does that say?

http://blog.thephoenix.com/BLOGS/talkingpolitics/archive/2012/10/16/mind-the-binder.aspx