It is remarkable, in retrospect, what passed for a gaffe in 2012. During that year’s presidential campaign, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, then the Republican presidential nominee, ignited a minor political scandal when he bragged that he had “binders full of women” that he used to hire qualified female candidates. “We [made] a concerted effort to find women that could be qualified to become members of our Cabinet,” Romney said during the second presidential debate, in response to a question about gender inequality in the workplace. “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 awkward comment didn’t go over well, spawning a thematic novelty Tumblr account and many a Halloween costume that fall before Romney eventually lost the election. Four years later, Donald Trump was caught on video bragging about sexually assaulting women, and won.

As it turns out, Romney’s binders full of women weren’t just a ham-fisted metaphor. This week, the Boston Globe revealed that it had received two white three-ring binders, courtesy of a former Romney aide, weighing in at 15 pounds and 6 ounces and “packed with nearly 200 cover letters and résumés, along with a few handwritten notations” dating back to Romney’s 2002 governorship transition. A coalition of women’s groups called Massachusetts Government Appointments Project (MassGAP) collated the information, which Romney says he asked for and the women’s group says was delivered unprompted. “It was a response to a desire on the part of the Romney administration to access a pool of talent,”Linda Rossetti, who was then part of MassGAP, told the Globe. “They drummed up what was an inelegant way to get at this pool of talent.”

Romney’s binders full of women, the Globe reports, actually led to quite a few hires: several women from the binders would go on to serve in Massachusetts state jobs under Romney. “He wanted to have his Cabinet and office staff well represented with women,” Beth Myers, Romney’s former chief of staff, said. “We weren’t getting a ton of names. . . . Those résumés in the binders—they weren’t just used in the beginning to look for staff and put in a corner; we used them throughout, especially for boards and commissions.”

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