Women are often portrayed as sex objects in the media. Now, women are items that can fit into binders!
When asked about what he would do to face pay inequity in the workplace, Mitt Romney responded that while working as governor of Massachusetts, he wanted more women on his cabinet.
“And — and so we — we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. I went to a number of women’s groups and said, can you help us find folks? And I brought us whole binders full of — of women.”
Photo courtesy of bindersfullofwomen.tumblr.com
Romney’s comments may seem harmless, but the fact that he didn’t seem to know of any qualified women is important to note.
But what I would like to focus on is the way Romney, and many others, seem to think about women.
What would have happened if he had said “binders full of Asian people?” What if he had asked for “binders full of Latinos?” Romney never would have said “binders full of men.” So why is it that he feels it’s perfectly okay to say on national television that he had “binders full of women?”
A more acceptable answer could have gone like this:
And — and so we — we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. I went to a number of women’s groups and said, can you help us find folks? And these women’s groups gave me the resumes of numerous qualified women applicants.
It turns out that Romney was lying about this whole situation in the first place. MassGAP, a non-partisan organization aiming to increasing the number of women in government jobs, approached Romney and asked him to promise to appoint more women. He did not go on a search for any “binders.”
This is relevant to the portrayal of women in the media. Romney’s “binders” comment is just another one of many examples of the objectification of women in the media.
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