Earlier today on This Week, Carolyn Maloney and Susan Collins suggested that the Secret Service imbroglio in Colombia may not have happened if the agency had more women.
STEPHANOPOULOS: I think it's appropriate that we have female legislators here today, because we just learned this morning that the agent who swept in and cleaned this all up, female agent Paula Reid, head of the service detail down in Latin America, and she seemed to get to the bottom of this quickly.
COLLINS: She did. She acted decisively, appropriately, and I can't help but wonder if there'd been more women as part of that detail if this ever would have happened.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, what's the latest, though, on the investigation?
MALONEY: I would like to say I talked to Director Sullivan last night, and he was commending her leadership, too. She really went in there and cleaned up the mess. And one thing I asked him is, how many women are on the force? It's only 11 percent of the agents are women.
And if -- we agree on this. If there were more agents on the ground, maybe we would not have had this.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Only 11 percent?
MALONEY: And I can't help but keep asking this question, where are the women? We probably need to diversify the Secret Service and have more minorities and more women.
Watch the clip
here:
According to the EEOC,
25 percent of Secret Service agents are women. Still, whether it's 11 percent or 25 percent, it still sounds like a pretty low figure. Especially considering that the
job requirements are more mental than physical.