The campaign to get Elizabeth Warren appointed to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau got me thinking — why is it that so many of the heroic leaders who have pushed the Obama administration to be more steadfastly progressive on financial issues just happen to be female?
That honor roll would begin with Warren; it would include Sheila Bair, who heads the FDIC; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington State; former commodities regulator Brooksley Born; and Heather Booth who spearheaded Americans for Financial Reform.
Inside the administration, the member of the senior economics team who has pushed hardest for a more expansive approach to economic recovery is the chair of President Obama’s Economic Council, Christina Romer.
What these people have in common is that they are not members of the financial old boys’ club, in both senses. They are neither one of the boys, nor did they come out of the Wall Street milieu.
And two of the three Republican senators who broke ranks to provide the sixty votes to pass financial reform, Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, are also women.…
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Robert Kuttner: “Women on the Verge” “The rising of the women means the rising of the race.” “Bread and Roses” I heard Bob Kuttner speak at the 2008 Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association, held here in Boston. I appreciate his insights. |
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