The State of Black Women in Politics Under the First Black President

The Obama Women

The administration began with such promise. With the election of Obama came the appointment of the most diverse cabinet in history. ¹ According to Sam Ali, writing for Diversity Inc.com, 30 percent of Obama’s cabinet appointments were women and 39 percent were Black, Latino and Asian. Among these appointments were many black women, including Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett (a Chicago colleague of the Obamas, who served as a top advisor on Obama’s campaign, then as co-chair of his transition team) and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice (Rice was Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs during Clinton’s second term). Desiree Rogers (another Obama Chicago colleague) was hired as Social Secretary, and Lisa P. Jackson was made the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (she was the former Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection). Several of these women were the first black or biracial women in their positions: Jackson, Melody Barnes (Director of the Domestic Policy Council), Mona Sutphen (Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy) and Margaret (Peggy) Hamburg (Food and Drug Administration Commissioner). ² Krissah Thompson, writing for the Washington Post, said African-American women occupy about seven of three dozen senior positions in Obama’s administration and that the women who are new to the Washington, D.C. environment find a supportive network extended by their predecessors. Those women include Donna Brazile, political strategist and the first African-American woman to direct a political campaign (Al Gore’s in 2000), and Cheryl Mills, who was the first black woman Deputy White House Council, during Clinton’s administration. Such a support network is important in an arena that is still largely white and male.

In addition to the appointment of a number of black women to his administration and staff, during his first months in office, Obama took several actions that showed solidarity and support for women. The first bill he signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, which made it easier for workers to sue their employers after discovering discriminatory payment practices, rather than having to report incidents within six months of the first occurrence. The bill changed the initial Supreme Court ruling of Ledbetter v. Goodyear, which denied Lilly Ledbetter the right to sue her employer of nearly 20 years after discovering men in her same position received more money than she, because she reported the discrimination more than 180 days after its first occurrence. Obama’s signing of the bill allowed workers who discover pay discrimination to sue within six months of learning of the discrimination, regardless of when it began ³ (although without the passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act, which is currently pending in the Senate and whose passage would update the Equal Pay Act of 1963, women’s pay will continue to lag behind men’s. The pay gap is even worse for African-American women, who in 2008 made only 61 cents for every dollar men made ⁴).

Less than two months later, on March 11, President Obama signed an executive order to create the White House Council on Women and Girls, headed by Valerie Jarrett, with Tina Tchen, Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, serving as Executive Director. The Council consists of heads of every Cabinet and Cabinet-level agency, and its purpose, according to Obama, is “to ensure that each of the agencies in which they’re charged takes into account the needs of women and girls in the policies they draft, the programs they create, the legislation they support.” ⁵ The White House website has dedicated a section to the Council, where Tchen, Jarrett, and others post regular updates about the effects of the administration’s policies and actions on women. Most recently, Obama declared August 26, 2010 “Women’s Equality Day,” in commemoration of the ratification of the 19th amendment, which granted women the right to vote. In his proclamation, Obama reminded Americans of his administrations’ commitment to “…advancing women’s equality in all areas of our society and around the world.” ⁶ These efforts—the bill, the Council, the proclamation—and the diversity of his administration, at least show that Obama keeps women, black women included, in mind. But upon closer inspection, and as time has passed, these acts appear to be merely token gestures made to appease those who bought into the hope and change promised by the Obama campaign.

In November 2009, Essence.com posted a “Power List” of 20 black women in Obama’s administration (including some who have since left the administration). The slide show presented photos of and blurbs about the “big names,” like Jackson, Hamburg, and Jarrett, but the 20 black “Obama women” also included members of the First Lady’s staff (Kristen Jarvis, Special Assistant for Scheduling and Travel Aide, and Dana Lewis, Special Assistant and Personal Aide); the Director of White House Events and Protocol, Micaela Fernandez; and Daniella Gibbs Leger, Director of White House Message Events.

While the work these women do should not be underestimated, Travel Aide to the First Lady and Ambassador to the UN or Surgeon General are very different positions. If looking exclusively at black women in the Cabinet or in Cabinet-level positions, the tally of 20 black women in the Obama administration shrinks to two: Lisa P. Jackson and Susan Rice. Furthermore, in the selection of Surgeon General, the black woman who is in the position now was not the President’s first choice. Regina Benjamin was only offered the job after Obama’s first choice, CNN’s chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta, turned it down. So while we see a diverse staff, there is still a telling lack of black women in positions of true power.

In a September 2009 article for More.com, Teresa Wilz, Senior Culture Editor at The Root, discusses this absence of black women in upper management and executive positions, despite the numbers of highly qualified black women available to serve in such capacities. Regarding the women selected to work in Obama’s Cabinet and the White House, Wilz says, “Let me be clear: Not many individuals, black, white, brown or other, achieve that level of power, whether at the White House or at Xerox. And yet there are hundreds of thousands of us, highly qualified and highly educated, available to be tapped.” ⁷ Of the associate and bachelor’s degrees awarded to black students, women earn approximately two-thirds, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, ⁸ and between 1996 and 2007, the number of black women getting master’s degrees grew by 130 percent, while white women’s increase was only 38 percent. ⁹

Krissah Thompson also illuminated the shortage of black women in visible positions of power, citing the Bureau of Labor’s statistic that more than 2.6 million black women were in management and professional jobs last year, yet “women and minorities still lack representation in proportion to their numbers on the federal level. In Congress, only 90 members are women, 42 are African-American, 28 are Latino and nine are Asian.” ¹⁰ And, from Wilz again:

According to Catalyst, a New York-based research firm that studies women in business, African-American women hold only five percent of all managerial, professional and related positions; white women hold 41 percent. Women of color are similarly scarce on corporate boards. And until Ursula Burns was tapped earlier this year to head Xerox, there were no black female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. ¹¹

Wilz pointed to the long-held belief in the black community that education was the only way to excel as the reason behind this pool of highly-educated and qualified black women. She blamed their under-representation in upper level positions both on a lack of enforcement of company diversity policies, as well as quotas: “…whenever one of us does manage to break through, her very presence may provide an excuse for keeping other black women out,” she wrote. ¹² Frequently, once a company hires one black woman, the feeling is that one is enough, and there is no need to hire another.

Finally, she wrote that black women are rarely hired for or encouraged to pursue positions that put them on an executive track, like sales or profit-related positions. Instead, companies hire them into static positions like community outreach or training jobs. Looking to the Obama administration, we see this trend perpetuated with the appointment of black women to primarily non-Cabinet level positions. And for the few appointed to positions of power, when it came time to defend these black women, the efforts made by the Obama administration were too little (in the case of Desiree Rogers, the former Social Secretary), or too late (for Shirley Sherrod).

Tellingly, the administration did stand up for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, despite concerns regarding her own lack of diversity hiring practices and apparent racial insensitivity.

1. Sam Ali, “Obama Vs. Bush: Scorecard on Cabinet Diversity,” DiversityInc.com, 4 November 2009.[↑]
2. Krissah Thompson, “The Ties That Align: Administration’s Black Women Form a Strong Sisterhood,” The Washington Post, 18 March 2009.[↑]
3. Brian Montopoli, “Obama Signs Equal Pay Bill,” CBSnews.com, 29 January 2009.[↑]
4. “Equal Pay for Equal Work: Pass the Paycheck Fairness Act,” ACLU.org, 6[↑]
5. Lynn Sweet, “Obama Signs Order Creating Council on Women and Girls,” Chicago Sun Times, 11 March 2009.[↑]
6. Barack Obama, “Presidential Proclamation—Women’s Equality Day, 2010,” WhiteHouse.gov, 26 August 2010.[↑]
7. Teresa Wilz, “Obama Effect’ for Black Women?” More.com, October 2009.[↑]
8. Thompson, 3.[↑]
9. Wilz, 1.[↑]
10.  Thompson, 3.[↑]
11. Wilz, 2.[↑]
12. Wilz, 2.[↑]