2012 Presidential Debate Quotes
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Source: 2012 Presidential Debate
Speaker: Mitt Romney
"And they brought us whole binders full of women."
QUESTION: In what new ways do you intend to rectify the inequalities in the workplace, specifically regarding females making only 72 percent of what their male counterparts earn? […]
ROMNEY: Thank you and important topic. And one which I learned a great deal about, particularly as I was serving as governor of my state. Because I had the chance to pull together a Cabinet, and all of the applicants seemed to be men. And I went to my staff and I said: "How come all of the people for these jobs are all men?" They said: "Well, these are the people that have the qualifications." And I said: "Well gosh, can't we find some women that are also qualified?" And we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our Cabinet. I went to a number of women's groups and said: "Can you help us find folks?" And they brought us whole binders full of women.
Context
This line was spoken by Mitt Romney in the 2012 Presidential Debates (October 16, 2012).
During a debate against Barack Obama, while fielding a question about equal pay for women, Mitt Romney claimed that, when he was governor of Massachusetts, he personally sought to involve more ladies in his administration by reaching out to groups that provided him with "binders full of women." And just like that, a meme was born.
Twitter exploded and that moment became, hands down, the most talked about bit from the entire debate. It probably helped that the phrasing was super awkward. What Mitt Romney had meant to say is that these groups brought him "binders filled with information on qualified female candidates," not literally "binders full of women." You have to admit, it would be hard to stick more than an arm or a leg of an actual woman in a binder.
Where you've heard it
The idea of "binders full of women" is a pretty famous political gaffe and you may hear people trot this one out when they're making fun of the idea that you can solve all women's issues through simple binder-like solutions. Hey, ladies are complex.
Additional Notable References:
- Binders Full of Women is a Facebook group that highlights women's issues in politics in a funny way.
- Amazon was flooded with binder reviews that bemoaned the fact that these binders were "unfortunately too small to put women in."
- Jeopardy featured a category called "A Binder Full of Women" that contained questions about famous women.
Pretentious Factor
If you were to drop this quote at a dinner party, would you get an in-unison "awww" or would everyone roll their eyes and never invite you back? Here it is, on a scale of 1-10.
It's not really pretentious to mention your binders full of women, but we can't guarantee you're gonna win any elections because of it. Of course, if you're joking about binders full of women—and we're gonna guess you are—you're totally in the clear.