When President Barack Obama took office, the White House wasn’t the friendliest place for women.
Anita Dunn, who served as White House communications director until November 2009 said:
“If you didn’t come in from the campaign, it was a tough circle to break into. Given the makeup of the campaign, there were just more men than women.”
In order to make sure that they were heard, the women came up with a system that they called “amplification.” When one woman piped up in the cabinet meetings, the other women would repeat what she said.
The president noticed this and the women were called on more in meetings. This strategy helped prevent women from being ignored in the decision-making processes.
White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said:
“I think having a critical mass makes a difference. It’s fair to say that there was a lot of testosterone flowing in those early days. Now we have a little more estrogen that provides a counterbalance.”
This will likely change when Hillary Clinton takes office. She plans on bringing in a female chief of staff.
We need to learn to work together as women instead of competing with each other. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said this in her book, Lean In:
“In the days of tokenism, women looked around the room and instead of bonding against an unfair system, they often viewed one another as competition…women wound up being ignored, undermined, and in some cases even sabotaged by other women.”
We have come a long way in this area. The first female to be in a cabinet, Frances Perkins was the Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945. She is responsible for executing many parts of the New Deal. You can thank her for your unemployment benefits and pensions. It was not all that long ago, now we have the possibility of a woman becoming president.
Featured image from Pete Sousa, the White House.
