Neera Tanden is president of the Center for American Progress.

Last week, newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made headlines by nominating 15 women to his 30-seat Cabinet. Asked why he did it, he replied, “Because it’s 2015.”

Last I looked, it was 2015 in the United States, too. And yet, only seven of America’s 22 Cabinet-rank positions, excluding the office of the vice president, are held by women.


Why can’t the United States do what Trudeau managed? If half of the members of Canada’s Cabinet can be female, why couldn’t we get to 50 percent­, too? We’re talking about finding, at minimum, 11 women out of the almost 160 million in this country who could serve in the Cabinet at once, even fewer than in Trudeau’s highly qualified group.

In fairness, President Barack Obama’s numbers are an improvement compared with the 25 percent of Cabinet posts during George W. Bush’s second term. But the current administration’s number’s are still below the high water mark of 40 percent two decades ago under Bill Clinton. In addition, three U.S. Cabinet posts — defense, Treasury and veterans affairs — have never been held by women.

Meanwhile, a Cabinet that’s one-third women looks modern compared with the U.S. Congress, where only 1-in-5 members is female. The number of women finally cracked triple digits just last year, putting the United States in a mere 76th place worldwide in terms of the representation of women in the national Legislature. Only six of 50 states have female governors. A groundbreaking first such as an election of a female president aside, it would take an estimated 70 years for women to pull even with the number of men in leadership roles in this country at the current rate.

Of course, no one really expects a late-term shakeup of Obama’s Cabinet for the sake of equal representation. But we shouldn’t consider a Cabinet with an equal number of men and women — one that reflects the country’s population, as Trudeau said — to be out of the realm of possibility.

What would that Cabinet look like? It’s not hard to imagine that, in 2017, a Michèle Flournoy, former undersecretary of defense for policy, could become the first female defense secretary, or a Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, could become the first woman as Treasury secretary. For a Republican Cabinet, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez would be more than qualified to lead the Justice Department, and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley would be a highly capable choice to head the Department of Homeland Security.

Of course, part of the imbalance between Canada’s Cabinet and our own can be attributed to our distinct political systems. Canadian Cabinet ministers are typically members of parliament, and the number and makeup of ministers is more frequently reshuffled there than it is in the White House. The last major realignment was in the mid ’90s, though the composition can vary with prime ministers. (It should also be pointed out that Canada was already doing better on gender parity than the United States under Trudeau’s predecessor, Stephen Harper, a conservative who had 12 women in his last Cabinet.)

What’s more, the reasons for America’s pervasive leadership gap across society (women make up just 2 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs) are complex and varied, and they stem from longstanding cultural attitudes and structural inequities that can’t be fixed with the stroke of a magic wand. Yet, as Trudeau’s action proved, the selection of a Cabinet is perhaps the one place where a forward-thinking commander in chief, regardless of his or her gender or party, could single-handedly make a mark when it comes to women’s representation in government.

A U.S. Cabinet with equal representation of men and women certainly is attainable: It should go without saying that women are qualified for these positions. They have outnumbered men in college since 1988. They have earned at least a third of law degrees since 1980 and were a third of medical school students by 1990. And women have earned more undergraduate business degrees than men since 2002. The shortage of women in leadership roles is no reflection on the accomplishments of women — nor their ability to “lean in” or “have it all.”

And a Cabinet that has women as half of its members wouldn’t just be a symbolic gesture; there are tangible benefits that come from more equitable representation in government. In 2013, Obama said he would strive for a Cabinet diverse in both race and gender because it “helps to create more effective policymaking and better decision making for me because it brings different perspectives to the table.” More women can mean more, and better, results, too. In the business world, Fortune 500 companies with more women directors see higher returns on equity, sales and capital investments than those with fewer women, according to a Catalyst study.

I don’t want to diminish the very real progress women have made toward equal representation in the past several decades. But we can do more. The image of 15 women and 15 men standing behind Trudeau on Thursday was a powerful symbol. This is how Jean Charest, a former premier of Quebec who appointed women to half of provincial ministries in 2007, described it to the Montreal Gazette: “It’s a message to Canadian women — and young women, in particular — that this world is about you. … You have to move beyond the old boys’ network.”

In 2017, the next president should send American women the same kind of signal with a Cabinet that is truly representative of our country — and that means half women.