Obama's White House is a 'hostile environment for females that treats women like meat'

Allegations in Confidence Men: Wall Steet, Washington and the Education of a President, by Ron Suskind

Top female advisers felt left out by a boy's club in the White House where rampant infighting sabotaged the administration's economic decisions, according to a controversial new book.

Sidelined and ignored in the West Wing, some women aides reportedly complained to President Obama about their treatment in 2009.

In an excerpt obtained by the Washington Post, a female senior aide is quoted as calling the White House a hostile environment for women.

A new book alleges the White House can be a hostile environment for women to work in. President Obama, who goes home to a wife, two daughters and a mother-in-law at night, is not personally cited for any mistreatment

Confidence Men: Wall Steet, Washington and the Education of a President, by journalist Ron Suskind, is due out in the shops next Tuesday.

Former Communications Director Anita Dunn calls the work environment 'hostile' in the book, which she now denies having said

According to the Post, former White House Communications Director Anita Dunn says in the book: 'This place would be in court for a hostile workplace because it actually fit all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women.'

Dunn denied to the Post that she made the remark, adding: 'The president is someone who when he goes home at night he goes home to a house full of very strong women. He values having strong women around him.'

But Suskind's book insists many women felt outmaneuvered by male colleagues such as former Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel and, Larry Summers, former chairman of the National Economic Council.

'I felt like a piece of meat,' Christina Romer, former head of the Council of Economic Advisers, said of one meeting with Summers.

The Post said Dunn raised the issue during the 2008 campaign when a TV ad was prepared without featuring a single woman.

In the book Larry Summers and Rahm Emanuel, now Mayor of Chicago, are cited as making women unhappy and feel outmaneuvered



'I was dumbfounded. It wasn't like they were being deliberately sexist. It's just there was no-one offering a female perspective.'

The book also details internal squabbles between Obama's economic team, including Timothy Geithner

'The president has a real woman problem. The idea of the boy's club being just Larry and Rahm isn't really fair. He (Obama) was just as responsible himself,' an unnamed high-ranking woman official told the author.

The book also reportedly details internal squabbling between Obama's economic team, among them Summers and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Based on interviews with more than 200 people, the book is being published at a sensitive time for Obama, who is facing the lowest public approval figures of his tenure.

However, in an interview today with the Post, Dunn takes issue with Suskind's depiction of the White House.