February 16, 2021

The Gender Policy Council, while based in the White House, will have high-level representation in all offices.Celeste Sloman for The New York Times

By Alisha Haridasani Gupta and Emma Goldberg

"This is not just a council. It's a plan to take a government-wide approach to gender equity."

— Jennifer Klein, co-chair of President Biden's new Gender Policy Council

The White House will soon have a Gender Policy Council.

The council — like many parts of the Biden administration — has its roots in eras past, but a new name, a new structure, a full-time leader and a larger staff will help keep gender issues — and yes, "women's issues" (no eye-rolling, thank you) — at the center of almost everything the administration does.

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Consider this: The council will not be relegated to some distant, dusty government building. It will find its home in the White House and it intends to have high-level representation in all offices, including the Council on Economic Advisers and the Defense Department. And it will directly collaborate with every agency across government, working on all of the issues that touch American lives, most notably women's lives, such as national security, health care and economics. Amid two crises — a pandemic and an economic downturn — that have devastated women professionally and personally, the Gender Policy Council will play a critical role in pushing forward President Biden's agenda.

All it's waiting for is Mr. Biden's signature.

Leading the effort will be two co-chairs: Julissa Reynoso, who served as ambassador to Uruguay, and Jennifer Klein, who served as senior adviser to Hillary Clinton, then the first lady.

This is not the first time the two women have worked together; they started their careers as lawyers at the same law firm. Ms. Klein has worked in feminist organizations for more than 25 years, and Ms. Reynoso formerly served in the State Department. They also happen to share a mentor, Mrs. Clinton. Now they are in charge of ensuring that gender equity underscores the work of all branches of government.

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"This is not just a council," Ms. Klein said in the first interview that they have given since being appointed as co-chairs. "It's a plan to take a government-wide approach to gender equity and equality."

That way, Ms. Klein explained, the policy areas traditionally viewed as women's issues — the pay gap, sexual harassment, reproductive health and child care — won't be separated from the administration's broader priorities like climate change or infrastructure.

"The council is an absolutely critical first step," Mrs. Clinton said in a phone interview. "It sends a very clear policy message to the rest of government that there is going to be constant attention paid to how important it is to integrate the kinds of concerns women are facing, especially post-pandemic."

Julissa Reynoso.Celeste Sloman for The New York Times

How it all began

In 1995, Mrs. Clinton, then a first lady with a reputation for challenging the conventional constraints of her role, flew to Beijing to deliver a speech that echoed around the globe. "Women's rights are human rights," she declared. It was a call to action that spurred the creation of the first White House body focused on advancing issues of gender equity across all government offices.

Melanne Verveer, then chief of staff to the first lady, recalled that on the 75th anniversary of women's suffrage President Bill Clinton interrupted a vacation in Wyoming to announce a new Interagency Council on Women, which would be tasked with weaving the ambitious vision and ideas from the Beijing World Conference on Women into American policies.

The interagency council was initially chaired by Madeleine Albright — the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations at the time — and later by Donna Shalala, the secretary of health and human services.

But it was clear that Mrs. Clinton was driving the effort: "The beehive of activity resided in the first lady's office," Ms. Verveer said. "That was where a lot of the leadership was emanating."

Both Ms. Albright and Ms. Shalala were doing their council work in addition to their day jobs, and because the council itself didn't include cabinet secretaries, it could, at times, be difficult to get upper level buy-in from senior leadership. It didn't help that the council reported to the first lady, not the president.

In October 1997, for example, the White House hosted its first official conference on child care, with Mrs. Clinton presiding over the discussion.

The first lady invited Robert Rubin, then secretary of the Treasury, to participate in the panel and draw the connection between quality child care and benefits to the economy.

He was perplexed by the request, Mrs. Clinton recalled.

According to Ms. Verveer, he responded, "Well, what do I know about child care?"

He eventually agreed to speak, but "he was taken somewhat aback in being asked — it was a little bit outside his comfort zone," Mrs. Clinton said.

Taking it a step further

After the Clintons left the White House, President George W. Bush quietly disbanded the Interagency Council on Women, leaving it to Laura Bush, the first lady, to advocate women's rights out of her office and in conjunction with the Office of Global Women's Issues. On paper, the Office of Global Women's Issues was an arm of the State Department, but in reality it was housed far from the action, in a small satellite office on a nondescript street in Washington.

In 2009, the situation changed again. Under President Barack Obama, the White House created a new, slightly more powerful gender-focused council called the Council on Women and Girls.

This time, every cabinet member was involved, explained Tina Tchen, who was appointed as the council's executive director and who now serves as the president and chief executive of the anti-sexual harassment Time's Up movement.

The council, however, still didn't have a full-time leader — Ms. Tchen was also director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, and Ms. Jarrett served as a senior adviser to Mr. Obama — nor did it report directly to the president. And it didn't have much authority to design policies itself.

Jennifer Klein.Celeste Sloman for The New York Times

"It was situated in the Office of Public Engagement so it had more of a public relations or outreach function," said Lyric Thompson, the senior director of policy and advocacy at the International Center for Research on Women.

The council was dismantled again in 2016, under President Donald J. Trump.

'We've come 180 degrees'

Although Mr. Biden has yet to officially establish the Gender Policy Council through executive order, Ms. Klein and Ms. Reynoso have been at work for weeks putting together their priorities for their first days on the job.

The council will report directly to the president, sending the message that their work is a presidential priority.

Unlike previous iterations of gender councils, this one will consist of four full-time staff members — three senior-level advisers who will craft policy and one staff member who will focus on administration duties — in addition to Ms. Klein and Ms. Reynoso. Ms. Klein will be its dedicated, full-time chair, while Ms. Reynoso is also serving as chief of staff to the first lady, Dr. Jill Biden.

Every cabinet member will participate. This may be more of a formality, but it shows that agency leaders are obligated to make clear commitments to advance the council's work. And the executive order will call for the cabinet members to designate representatives within their agencies who will be in charge of advancing gender equity work, both within their teams and when it comes to crafting new policies.

"Part of the thinking is to have senior officials who can oversee each respective agency's work towards advancing gender equity and equality," Ms. Reynoso explained.

This staffing structure, Ms. Thompson said, will also make it more difficult (though not impossible) for future administrations to dismantle the council. It is easier for presidents to keep existing agencies, she explained, because "there is funding from the last budget cycle and a slot in the 'Plum Book.'" (The Plum Book is the publication produced by House and Senate committees after every presidential election that lists the thousands of workers in the legislative and executive branches of government, from department heads to clerks, under the previous president.)

From Day 1, Ms. Klein and Ms. Reynoso's plans will touch on a range of issues. They want to see a national plan for addressing gender-based violence, for example, and they want to see the federal government improve workplace policies for its female employees, serving as a model for other employers around the country to do the same.

And they will help set in motion key components of the Biden administration's economic recovery program, particularly to fund caregiving.

"We've come 180 degrees from the world where people in power don't think caregiving is an issue they need to focus on," said Ms. Klein, who recalled feeling pleasantly surprised when Mr. Biden announced during the presidential campaign that caregiving would be the third plank of his economic recovery plan.

"I thought, 'OK, this is definitely a new world,'" she said.

Read the full article here.

In Her Words: Hillary Clinton

Nearly three decades after the White House established its first council for women and girls, here we are again.

We caught up with Mrs. Clinton to discuss how effective this new council could be and what had — or had not — changed in the past quarter century.

The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Hillary Clinton hosted a child care conference at the White House in 1997.Wally McNamee/Getty Images

What are your thoughts on how the Gender Policy Council is structured? Does it have the power and tools to really help women in this time of crisis?

The council is an absolutely critical first step. It sends a very clear message to the rest of government that there is going to be constant attention paid to how important it is to integrate the concerns that women are facing, especially post-pandemic, in every walk of life, and that the administration is expecting to highlight a governmentwide focus on uplifting the rights of girls and women, not only in our country but across the globe.

But clearly the work is making it a reality by coordinating among all of the agencies of the federal government who have a seat at the table and actually bringing forward legislative and regulatory changes that will fulfill the mission of the council.

Is a council in the White House the best way to help women right now? Or is there a better way to approach it?

I'll answer your question by saying it's necessary, but not sufficient. If you don't have a council in the White House, you don't signal the importance of these issues to the incoming president and vice president. If you don't staff it with really smart, experienced people, then you're setting it up for failure.

Part of the challenge for the council is to get very specific, and then set up both a structure and a timeline for involving the rest of the government.

I know how effective both Jen and Julissa are, having worked with both of them. They know that you've got to drive a bureaucracy. You can't just say, "OK, we care about everybody, go out and do good." You have to implement it. You have to have measures of accountability. You have to be absolutely on it every day.

Twenty-five years after your speech in Beijing with your now iconic statement — "women's rights are human rights" — the world still talks about women's rights in a condescending way, as if it's something that is granted to women — not something they inherently deserve — and that can be easily taken away. Should the discussion around women's rights be reframed?

I wrote an article in The Atlantic to commemorate the Beijing speech in September, and I made the case that we needed to shift our attention and certainly our rhetoric from a rights-based framework to a power-based one. You cannot continue to argue about whether women deserve certain rights or not. Why are we still having to demand our rights? Isn't there an equity agenda that treats mothers and fathers equally? The power imbalance that still exists is what I think has to be the basis for the debate going forward.

Read the full conversation here.

Today's In Her Words is written by Alisha Haridasani Gupta and Emma Goldberg, and edited by Francesca Donner. Our art director is Catherine Gilmore-Barnes, and our photo editor is Sandra Stevenson.

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