Women in the White House are not pleased with President Obama's recent cabinet decisions, according to comments by Andrea Mitchell, NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent, on Sunday's Meet the Press.
While Obama has not announced his picks for all cabinet positions, the ones with notable clout -- Secretaries of State, Defense, and Treasury, as well as his CIA director selection -- are all men.
A recent picture taken by White House staff, which showed Obama surrounded mostly by male advisors, has also been circulating in recent days, fomenting calls of a gender problem in the administration.
"Is there a problem with the president not pursuing more diversity, more women in his cabinet? Are you troubled by that?" asked host David Gregory.
Newark's Mayor Cory Booker defended Obama and called the allegations "swiftboating." He claims that half of White House staff are women, as well as noting Obama's Supreme Court nominations of Elene Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. The Lilly Ledbetter Act and his push for women's health all show Obama's support for "policies and practices" that support women, too, he said, arguing that it's unfair to claim some cabinet positions are more important than others.
But detractors claim that the fifty percent statistic obscures the hierarchy where men sit in the majority of top posts.
Andrea Mitchell said that the photo showed who Obama was consulting during the fiscal cliff -- all men.
"At the highest level of the White House and in the cabinet, you have men and they are white men," Mitchell said.
After Mitchell wrote about this issue earlier this weel, "I talked to several people inside the White House — women — and they said 'No, we didn't have any problem about what you wrote about this week.' The women are not happy," she continued.
Watch the video, via NBC, below.
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[h/t Huffington Post]
