What do women want? That’s the age-old question.
But in the context of what women’s groups hope for — and expect — in President Obama’s second term, the answers aren’t all that mysterious.
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The National Organization for Women is pressing for a full half of the Cabinet to be made up of women — just like the U.S. population generally. NOW President Terry O’Neill says there’s no reason it can’t be done. “Gone are the days when you really had to search high and low for qualified candidates,” she says.
There’s a chance, though, that the number of women in Cabinet-level jobs could dip. Of the five top appointees likely to depart soon — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson — two are women. Of course, others appear to be staying put, at least for now, including Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, and Small Business Administration chief Karen Mills.
O’Neill says candidates such as U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice for secretary of state (whose potential nomination is running into resistance from Senate Republicans) and former Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. chairman Sheila Bair for Treasury would fit the bill. And there are women among the candidates being talked about for other jobs.
Obama’s record on hiring women has generally won praise, though reports from the early days of his first term had some female White House staffers feeling frozen out of his inner circle.
Emily’s List President Stephanie Schriock says she expects Obama to “keep building on” his track record, citing the women in his first-term Cabinet and among his senior campaign staff (she pointed to campaign officials Jen O’Malley Dillon, Stephanie Cutter and Juliana Smoot as evidence of his continued willingness to staff up with women). And she thinks there’s a call for even more such hires.
“Last election was a clear mandate for women’s leadership,” she says. “Voters want to see women in the highest levels of government.”
Like O’Neill, she says the problem isn’t a lack of capable, confirmable candidates. “There are so many qualified women who are ready to serve — and the great news is that the guy who doesn’t need a binder to find them won the election.”
USDA choice
Update on the Obama second-term Cabinet watch:
Right after the election, we had put Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on the “stay” list in terms of Cabinet members’ future status in the second Obama term.
The chatter then was that, while he’s in very good standing with the White House, he might leave if his wife, Christie Vilsack , lost her bid for a House seat back home in Iowa. Christie Vilsack, running in a distinctly conservative-leaning district, did indeed lose to incumbent Rep. Steve King (R), 53 percent to 45 percent.
But the latest chatter is that Tom Vilsack, rather than heading west, might be staying on, and Christie Vilsack might instead be moving east to join him here.
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