Perdue's team is short on women

RALEIGH -- When Beverly Perdue was sworn in as North Carolina's first female governor in January, many women cheered her historic achievement.

And though many of those same women give Perdue high marks for her first months in office, there has been some grumbling among Democratic women that Perdue has not done more to bring other women along with her.

Perdue has appointed fewer women to Cabinet posts than any North Carolina governor in a generation and has fewer females among her top policy advisers than her recent male predecessors in the Executive Mansion.

"I'm a little bit disappointed," said former state Rep. Bertha Holt, 93, a retired lawyer from Burlington and a pioneer in women's politics in North Carolina.

"I have no idea how she is approaching this," Holt said. "The men have to curry favor with the women. I guess she thinks she already has the favor of the women."

Perdue, 62, declined to be interviewed for this article. Asked about it during an appearance at the Outer Banks on Friday, Perdue responded, "I hired really bright men and women."

Chrissie Pearson, her spokeswoman, said Perdue included women in key positions throughout her administration, from top advisers to people running state agencies. To get a true picture of her administration, Pearson said, one would have to look at the makeup of the leadership teams throughout state government.

"It was not so much about balancing gender, but about balancing the right people for the right jobs," Pearson said.

Perdue, who lived most of her adult life in New Bern, learned her politics in the conservative-leaning towns and farm country of Eastern North Carolina and in the legislature, where she worked her way up the ladder in a testosterone-fueled environment still run largely by a good-old-boy network.

Male-dominated teams

Perdue was seen early in her career as a moderate, pro-business Democrat, not closely aligned with abortion-rights and feminist groups.

When she ran for governor, Perdue's campaign was dominated by men.

And so is her administration.

There are only two women in Perdue's Cabinet -- Linda Carlisle, secretary of the state Department of Cultural Resources, and Linda Hayes, secretary of the state Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Both departments are relatively small and low-profile among the 10 Cabinet departments in state government.

Not since the administration of Republican Gov. Jim Holshouser, from 1973 to 1977, have there been so few female Cabinet heads, although the differences are not dramatic. Most recently, Democratic Gov. Mike Easley named three women to head Cabinet agencies.

But most of the senior, and best-paid, advisers in Perdue's office are men. They include Chief of Staff Zach Ambrose; Deputy Chief of Staff Don Hobart; Andy Willis, senior adviser for governmental affairs; Eddie Speas, chief legal counsel; David Kochman, communications director; and Pearse Edwards, communications and policy adviser.

No female senior policy advisers

Perdue is lacking the female senior policy advisers that served past governors, Democratic and Republican, such as Susan Rabon, Jane Patterson, Karen Rotterman and Nancy Temple. (During her two terms as lieutenant governor, Perdue had two women -- Kaye Gattis and Betsy Conti -- work as her chief of staff.)

Pearson said Perdue considers Linda Coleman, a former state legislator who serves as state personnel director, as a member of the Cabinet. Past governors have not considered personnel directors as Cabinet members, and Perdue's own Web page does not list the personnel office as a Cabinet agency.

"I can tell you from experience," Pearson said, "it is rare to sit at the table when there is not a woman other than the governor. Whether we are paid as much or not, our importance as part of the team has been very clear."

There has been some grumbling about the issue among Democratic women for months, but there has been a reluctance to publicly complain. They did not want to undercut North Carolina's first woman governor when she was coping with one of the state's worst budget crises in decades.

Sen. Ellie Kinnaird, a Carrboro Democrat, said that Perdue has done a good job in very difficult economic times and that she, like others, wants to see Perdue succeed.

But Kinnaird finds the lack of top female appointments troubling.

"I don't believe the old adage that there are not any women who are qualified," Kinnaird said.

Holt notes that not only has Perdue appointed fewer women to top positions, she has undercut an elected woman, June Atkinson, the superintendent of public instruction, by appointing Bill Harrison as the chief executive officer of the state's schools. The arrangement was later overturned by the courts.

State Labor Commissioner Cherie Berry, a Republican who has won three statewide elections, said Perdue should be commended for naming more members of the opposite sex -- in this case, men -- to senior positions than any governor in North Carolina history.

"We are way past the time when we ought to be grumbling about this," Berry said, adding that governors should be concerned with appointees' qualifications, not their sex.

Some former female governors, such as Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, have had reputations for surrounding themselves with males in key roles, said David McLennan, a Peace College political science professor who specializes in women and politics.

McLennan said Perdue is a product of her generation.

"She has never campaigned or positioned herself as the feminist candidate, as opposed to the perception of Hillary Clinton," McLennan said. "When women get upset with her, it's kind of unfair to Perdue. She has a 20-plus-year career of building her network that is typically male."

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