Mitt Romney's 'Binders Full of Women' Have Been Unearthed

During a 2012 presidential debate, then nominee Mitt Romney was asked about pay equity for women. Like many Republicans queried about women's issues, he stumbled a bit over his answer before delivering the line that launched a thousand memes (and a Tumblr).

Romney told the audience that as he was transitioning into the office of Massachusetts governor, he noticed all of the applicants for jobs in his cabinet were men. "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," he continued. "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."

The internet exploded and women's rights advocates rolled their eyes at the suggestion that women, like flimsy sheets of paper, could be filed away in plastic folders.

It turns out, those plastic folders­­—two huge ones, complete with numerical tabs—really do exist. They were shared recently with the Boston Globe by a former Romney aide.

According to the Globe, the white binders weigh about 15 pounds together and contain the resumes and cover letters of almost 200 candidates, including Susan Windham Bannister, now president and CEO Biomedical Growth Strategies; Gina McCarthy, an EPA chief in the Obama administration; and Luisa Paiewonsky, now infrastructure systems and technology director at the U.S. Department of Transportation Volpe Center.

One woman whose resume was included in the mix, Lillian Gonzalez, told the Globe she recalled never hearing back after an initial interview. Included with her information was a handwritten note: "Party? . . . Latino . . . May not be [Republican]." She confirmed to the Globe that she is not Republican but rather "fl[ies] off the screen to the left."

The binders were first compiled in 2002 by a coalition of women's groups known as MassGAP in an effort to help get more women into government positions. Indicative of the times, many of the resumes included fax numbers instead of email addresses, the Globe reports, and few included cellphone numbers.

Shortly after that gaffe-laden debate, representatives with MassGap came out and said that Romney actually didn't solicit those potential female hires. Carolyn Jones, who was secretary of the Massachusetts Womens' Political Caucus during the time Romney was governor, told ABCNews: "It didn't really have anything to do with Romney asking women to give him names."

Moreover, by the time Romney left the governor's office, only 25 percent of women held positions in his administration—a drop from 42 percent in 2002.

In today's seemingly anti-women political climate, the discovery of the binders is a fond walk down memory lane. But they haven't been forgotten this whole time. Last November, as Trump was finalizing his cabinet picks, Sen. Elizabeth Warren tweeted a message to Romney, who was getting ready to meet with the president-elect: "Gov @MittRomney: when you're meeting with @realDonaldTrump, maybe you could bring your binders full of women with you?" Accompanying the tweet was a photo of Trump's short list of cabinet picks: Of the 42 people pictured, only five were women.