US
Women’s
Cabinet
Representation
Falling
through the “Concrete Floor”
US
Women’s
Cabinet
Representation
Falling
through the “Concrete Floor”
Since 1993, every U.S. president, regardless of party, has
included at least three women in his initial Cabinet. Clinton
appointed four women in his second term (and five total across
his presidency). Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush,
had three female appointees in his first term and four in his
second. Barack Obama appointed four women in his first term
and, eventually, another four in his second term. According to
political scientists Claire Annesley,
Karen Beckwith, and
Susan Franceschet, the United States, for decades, has had a
“concrete floor” of nominating at least three women to cabinet
posts.
Annesley, Beckwith and Franceschet are completing a
comparative study on patterns of women’s appointments to
cabinet posts in seven advanced industrialized democracies.
They find that each country has a “concrete floor” or
a minimum number of women necessary for a cabinet to be
perceived as legitimate. As they summarized in the Washington
Post: “Concrete floors matter because regardless of which
party wins office, a minimal threshold of female appointments
is generally predictable, and because selectors generally
adhere to the standard set by their predecessors.”
How has U.S. President Trump fared? At this point, he has
fallen through the “concrete floor” with just two women
nominated and confirmed for his cabinet. This marks a
stunning reversal to a decades long norm.
While different countries have different norms in cabinet
selection – for example Canada’s cabinet must always contain a
representative from each province whereas in the United States
geographic representation is less important than at least some
racial and ethnicity diversity – Beckwith and her colleagues
found that all the countries they have studied consider
women’s representation in cabinets to be salient. Yet, norms
on the degree of gender balance varies. In some countries,
such as Germany and Spain, cabinets come close to being evenly
balanced between men and women. In other countries, such
as Britain, women tend to make up a substantial minority of
cabinet positions.
In Evolving Norms and the Demand for Equal Female Inclusion in
Governing Cabinets, Beckwith, Annesley and Franceschet discuss
the most recent example: Trudeau’s cabinet, which was the
first one with gender parity ever constructed by a North
American government. They ask “How is this possible? How did
Trudeau manage to find fifteen women to serve as ministers in
his first government – enough women to staff the entirety of
the smaller U.S. presidential cabinet – while during the same
era in the United States, President Barack Obama only found
four women out of 318 million people to nominate for his
initial cabinet?” And now President Trump has not even met
that standard.
When it comes to the more US-specific norm of cabinets having
at least some racial and ethnic diversity, Beckwith also
points to divergence from the norm; President Trump has been
heavily criticized for forming the first cabinet without a
Latino in decades.
The Washington Post used photos of all white men in decisionmaking mode to convey “the glaringly obvious” lack of
diversity in the Trump administration. Among those photos is
one that Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) used on the House
floor to questions this administrations’ representative
legitimacy – the photo was of Vice President Pence and six
male advisers in the Oval Office surrounding President Trump
while he signed an order restricting federal funds for
abortion-related activities in foreign countries.
These forms of push back demonstrate the “concrete floor” and
consequences of ignoring it. According to Beckwith and
colleagues “Wealthy democracies can no longer have men-only
cabinets, or, as we have written elsewhere, a prime minister
can no longer ‘over-select from just half the population’ in
appointing a cabinet. Having women in the national cabinet has
become crucial and conventional – even in the United States,
where women have now served in every presidential cabinet
since 1983, under Democratic and Republican presidents alike.
Indeed, having just one token female in a cabinet is no longer
enough.”
Of course representational criteria are not the only criteria
the Trump administration has broken with precedence to
ignore. Experiential and affiliation are described in greater
detail in our video clip and below.
Beckwith and her colleagues make the point that for cabinet
appointments across the countries they studied neither supply
nor process is an obstacle to achieving gender parity in
cabinet posts. “Across all parties, wealthy democracies have
large numbers of highly educated, politically elite women who
could serve in cabinets as ministers or department
secretaries… an incoming head of government can, if she or he
wants to do so, quickly and effectively establish a gender
parity cabinet with relatively little opposition.” Present
President and the U.S. included.