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I'm a Minnesota Girl, living in the south. I tell my friends I try not to talk and think like a Yankee, but sometimes I slip up!

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Bizarre or just not Inclusive?


I often wonder if some of the bizarre stances that Mitt takes are because being inclusive is just not something he has any familiarity with, at all. 

We will not hear the end of the snarky "binders of women" comment he made last night.  Was it the compelling point of the debate?  No.  Was it an example of how socially awkward he is, because his experiences in the high world of finance and the Mormon church have not provided him with a setting where he could learn about diversity and inclusion?  Most probably, in my opinion.

He obviously had a talking point memorized last night, and used it at the wrong time.  When asked about promoting pay equality on a going forward basis, really, all Mitt had to say was "I support that women should make as much as men do if they do the same work."  Instead, he decided to play up the one time in his career (his only political office) where he had a mixed staff of men and women.

He launched into a disingenuous discussion about his efforts to hire more women (6 out of 14) and stumbled over how he found the candidates in "binders of women" brought forth by women's groups.  He complicated his answer by dwelling on how women need more flexibility in the workplace, and he's granted it, by letting them go home at 5 pm so they can make dinner for the children.  OMG.

By the way, here's the real story of Mitt's feminine hires in Massachusetts:

In fact, Romney did not direct women's groups to bring him female candidate.  A non-partisan collaboration of women’s groups called  Massachusetts Government Appointments Project (MassGAP; a sort of regional Emily's list for appointees) was responsible for the effort in 2002, when the group's leaders realized that women held only 30 percent of the top appointed positions in the state.

Romney boasted that during his term as governor, Massachusetts had more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America. "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," he said.
This statement, too, is misleading. While 42 percent of Romney’s appointments during his first 2-1/2 years as governor were women, many resigned, and the  number of women in high-level appointed positions actually declined to 27.6 percent during his full tenure as governor.

     ~real story as reported by Boston Phoenix reporter David Bernstein

Mitt created the culture at Bain Capital, and while he ran it, there were no female partners.  Today, only 4 female partners exist in the 49 partner structure.  Mitt Romney simply does not see women
as people who belong in the room where the decisions are made.  Pure and simple.





2 comments:

Debby said...

I really love how you look at things squarely. I really think that Americans are too easily swayed, and do not care to look at facts. Sometimes I think that I might even be one of them.

Serena said...

Lord, help us.