The numbers don't lie. As I mentioned yesterday, this is not what anyone should expect or tolerate. We can do a lot better than this. Doesn't it seem reasonable to expect a 50/50 split? Looking at Obama's senior cabinet posts doesn't help the argument either.
Of the 515 senior-level government jobs tracked by The Washington Post at http://washingtonpost.com/headcount, Obama has named fewer women than Bill Clinton did in his first year in office (no jokes, please), and not all that many more than George W. Bush did in his first year.
Of the 376 people the Obama White House announced, nominated and confirmed in those top-tier administration jobs, only 32 percent have been women. In comparison, 46 percent of Clinton's Senate-confirmed nominees in 1993 were women, as were 26 percent of Bush's first-year nominees, according to a year-end study in 2001 by the Brookings Institution.
(Filtering for only White House officials -- folks who might have their gym shoes or clubs readily at hand, should a call come -- Obama's percentage of women in those top jobs is 37 percent.)
