Women should rule the world.
That’s the assumption behind Dee Dee Myers’ new book. You know who she is: the first female White House press secretary; the blonde/brunette who delivered President Clinton’s message at the very beginning of his reign; the talking head from the weekend political shows. Turns out—as it so often does in the tales of powerful women—there was more to that story. (Read my recent Q&A with her here.)
In Why Women Should Rule the World, Myers reveals the less-than-glorious back story to her meteoric rise to become the world’s most prominent flack. She had been running publicity for Clinton’s presidential campaign with great skill, despite her youth and her lack of any Washington experience. Once he won, she kinda sorta hoped she might be tapped for the White House job, but nevertheless was floored and grateful when she did.
Only she didn’t. Not really. George Stephanopoulos would rank above her (never mind his own youth and then lack of experience); she wouldn’t get the press sec’s traditional office; oh, and her pay would be way lower.
Why does all that matter when you’ve landed the job? Because in Washington, the capitol of status consciousness, people treat you according to your perceived worth. Turned out everyone knew Myers didn’t score all the perquisites of her office, and that cut into her credibility. In one particularly wince-worthy story, she tells of stomping into chief of staff Leon Panetta’s office upon learning that she made even less than a deputy in another office, a man with far less responsibility and lower rank than she. She demanded a $10,000 raise. Panetta flatly refused. His reasons: the guy took a pay cut to leave his previous job as a lawyer. “Plus, he has a family,” Panetta said.
It’s not that inequity in pay, job status and respect would instantly right itself with more women at the helm—or even with one woman at the helm, the one in Myers’ former workplace. (By the way, she studiously avoids endorsing her former boss’s wife.) But Myers’ point is that more is more when it comes to women in power: more visibility, more accountability, more say. We could hope for worse for our daughters.
Myers’ book is a lively and thought-provoking read, chock full of scholarly research about working women and the forces that hold them down. But the best bits are the insider tales of goings on at the White House. No, they don’t include the Monica years—though I gotta say the blue dress, not to mention the more recent escapades of other men in top office, is as good an argument as any as to why women should rule the world: most of us don’t think with our lady parts.
Here she is the other night on the Colbert Report: