HuffPo: Is Obama Uncomfortable Around Women?
October 15, 2009
by The New Agenda
|The following piece by Amy Siskind is featured at The Huffington Post. You can read the entire story there.
There’s a sign going up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It reads: “Boy’s Club: Girls Not Allowed.”
Despite much talk of hope and change, President Obama seems largely tone-deaf to women and women’s issues. Post-racial country – yes. Post gender inequality – not so much.
Were we sold a brand that touted diversity, yet delivered a president with a woman problem?
Earlier this week, CNN interviewed me for a segment on President Obama called Where are the women? Good question. Where are they?
The CNN piece was about the latest example of access and the boys club: Obama’s White House basketball game for Cabinet secretaries and members of Congress. Not a single woman was invited to the game. No matter that both Secretary Sebelius and U.N. Ambassador Rice were not only in town but both are hoops players. Hurt feelings? Secretary Sebeluis hastened to point out on Leno: unlike Obama, she actually made her college team.
The game last week was hardly an outlier. The Washington Post reports: a log of Obama’s athletic activities, meticulously maintained by Mark Knoller of CBS News, found no women listed among the participants in the president’s various basketball, golf and fishing outings. Neither do women on the White House staff participate in the basketball games Obama’s male staffers, including David Axelrod, have on weeknights.
Obama’s women problem is not confined to sports. When Obama held his highly publicized beer with Skip Gates and Sargeant Crowley, the Editor at MORE asked: Would Obama Talk to Women Over Beers?. Here’s the answer: no! Obama took the opportunity to speak out for Skip Gates, admittedly before knowing all the facts, as a teachable moment on the issue of race. Yet Obama, tone-deaf to women’s issues, was strangely silent when Rihanna was almost strangled to death by Chris Brown. Where was the teachable moment for violence and against women and teen dating violence – both epidemics in our country?
Read the rest here.
Well, once again, the United Kingdom is WAY ahead of the US on issues concerning women. The Treasury Select Committee has started hearings on the gender bias and pay inequities in the City. I’m trying to find a better link for information: http://www.guardian.co.uk/busi.....ial-sector
What is Jarrett doing about this issue—especially in light of the financial crisis? Oh, yeah, she got distracted by the Olympics bid….
First step in solving a problem is that one has to recognize that there is a problem. Does our White House think there is a problem?
When was the White House Council on Women and Girls created? Yes, it was early March. What do we think of the progress so far?
Yes but you have to admit they have really stepped up the fashion bulletins on Michelle Obama. Now that’s women’s news! In liberal men’s minds.
Good article… I haven’t posted a comment in that awful place since the primaries but I think it is important to stand up to these people, and help others who share similar views.
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