Just How Female-Friendly Is Obama's White House?

The shot comes from behind his right shoulder: President Barack Obama sits in the Oval Office, a fruit bowl on the table and weighty fiscal matters on the agenda. Ten men stand before him, his cadre of senior advisers, talking strategy. But wait, look closer: behind Dan Pfeiffer, noshing on a piece of fruit, is a limb. It belongs to Valerie Jarrett, the senior adviser known more than anything as bosom friend, “Obama whisperer.”

This picture, from December 29, 2012, became a symbol of Obama’s largely male inner circle, for what it showed and what it (very nearly) obscured. Debbie Walsh, the director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, sounded somewhere between laughter and tears when she mentioned that “little leg peeking out.” Walsh said, “That gives you pause if you think about how decisions are being made when there are no women's voices in the room.”