Binders Full of Women: A Meme That Means Something - Garance Franke-Ruta - The Atlantic

Binders Full of Women: A Meme That Means Something - Garance Franke-Ruta - The Atlantic:

'via Blog 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," he recalled. "I went to a number of women's groups and said, 'Can you help us find folks,' and they brought us whole binders full of women."

The Boston Phoenix's David Bernstein says the story isn't true -- that women's groups had been pushing these binders and that they were created by a bipartisan coalition of women's advocates:

What actually happened was that in 2002 -- prior to the election, not even knowing yet whether it would be a Republican or Democratic administration -- a bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government. There were more than 40 organizations involved with the Massachusetts Women's Political Caucus (also bipartisan) as the lead sponsor.They did the research and put together the binder full of women qualified for all the different cabinet positions, agency heads, and authorities and commissions. They presented this binder to Governor Romney when he was elected.

Regardless of who served as inspiration for creating the binders, Romney used them and MassGAP today says they got results: