President Barack Obama’s weekend outings to play golf have become regular events, especially when the weather cooperates.

But Sunday afternoon, an almost picture-perfect fall day, marked the first time in Obama’s presidency that a woman joined the golf game.

White House domestic policy aide Melody Barnes was among those who headed out to the Fort Belvoir army installation in Virginia to play golf with the president.  White House aides of varying levels of seniority typically play golf with the president but until Sunday, the games were all male.

“He golfed with women on the campaign trail but not until Melody this year,” White House spokesman Bill Burton was quoted as saying by Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times/Politics Daily. Sweet was part of the pool of reporters who covered Sunday’s golf outing.

The golf game came on the same day that The New York Times featured on its cover a story looking at whether Obama’s White House was too much of a “man’s world.”

The Times article cited complaints that arose after Obama hosted a high-level basketball game that included no female players. It also quoted some women Democrats raising concerns that women advisers to Obama do not seem to be as visible as their male counterparts or wield as much influence.

Women voters are a crucial part of the Democratic base because they tend to support the party in greater numbers than men.

During his presidential campaign last year, Obama made a concerted effort to court women voters by emphasizing issues such as pay equity and telling how he was raised by a single mother with considerable help from his grandmother.

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Reuters photo by Jonathan Ernst (Melody Barnes and White House Trip Director Marvin Nicholson walk up the White House driveway for a golf outing with President Obama).

White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers is rarely at a loss for words, which makes Tuesday's question-and-answer session at the National Press Club in Washington downright astonishing.

Summers, whose term as president of Harvard University ended rather abruptly after he made some unfortunate remarks about women and math and science aptitude, knew he was on very thin ice when he was asked a question about gender differences in retirement savings.

As soon as the question was asked, laughter spread around the room. Summers himself paused for a good 20 seconds before cracking a joke about how the question must have frightened his staff.

"Now you have just put their health at risk," he said. "I think I will move to the next question."

UPDATE:

See the full clip below:

It's worth watching!

Barely had President Barack Obama outlined a new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan meant to narrow the focus to eliminating the threat from al Qaeda and its Islamist allies, before the U.S.-led campaign ran into what was always going to be one of its biggest problems in limiting its goals. What does it do about the rights of women in the region?

The treatment of women has dominated the headlines this week after Afghan President Hamid Karzai signed a new law for the minority Shi'ite population which both the United States and the United Nations said could undermine women's rights. Karzai has promised a review of the law, while also complaining it was misinterpreted by Western journalists. 

In Pakistan, video footage has been circulated of Taliban militants flogging a teenage girl in the Swat valley, where the government concluded a peace deal with the Taliban in February. The graphic and disturbing video, which has been posted on YouTube, has outraged many Pakistanis and the flogging was condemned by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani as shameful. There have been contradictory reports of exactly when and why the girl was punished, although Dawn newspaper quoted a witness as saying she was flogged two weeks ago for refusing a marriage proposal.

But where do women's rights fit into the new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan?

The New York Times quoted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as saying in response to a question on the Afghan law that "women’s rights are a central part of the foreign policy of the Obama administration".

Mark Malloch Brown, Britain's foreign office minister for Africa, Asia and the U.N., was quoted by the Guardian as expressing dismay over the Afghan law's impact on women's rights. "We are caught in the Catch-22 that the Afghans obviously have the right to write their own laws," he said. "But there is dismay. The rights of women was one of the reasons the UK and many in the west threw ourselves into the struggle in Afghanistan. It matters greatly to us and our public opinion."

And NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the Afghan law could make it harder to raise troops to be sent to Afghanistan. "We are there to defend universal values and when I see, at the moment, a law threatening to come into effect which fundamentally violates women's rights and human rights, that worries me," he told the BBC.

Now, setting aside for the moment the question of how far the West should be prepared to fight for women's rights, compare these statements to what Obama said when he defined his strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan:

"Many people in the United States -- and many in partner countries that have sacrificed so much -- have a simple question: What is our purpose in Afghanistan?  After so many years, they ask, why do our men and women still fight and die there?  And they deserve a straightforward answer.

"So let me be clear: Al Qaeda and its allies -- the terrorists who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks -- are in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  Multiple intelligence estimates have warned that al Qaeda is actively planning attacks on the United States homeland from its safe haven in Pakistan.  And if the Afghan government falls to the Taliban -- or allows al Qaeda to go unchallenged -- that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can."

His comments were seen as a break from the aims of the former Bush administration to impose Western-style democracy in Afghanistan.  Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been clear about the need to keep the goals limited, telling Congress: “If we set ourselves the objective of creating some sort of Central Asian Valhalla over there, we will lose.”

Narrowing the focus to defeating the threat from al Qaeda and its Islamist allies will force Washington to make some unpalatable choices about how far it is willing to turn a blind eye to the repressive treatment of women both in Afghan society and among the Pashtun tribals in Pakistan.  Is the renewed attention on women's rights the first evidence of mission creep?

You might argue, as does Rafia Zakaria in this editorial in the Daily Times, that there is a moral obligation to help Afghan women.  You might also argue that raising the status of women often has powerful impact on improving economic conditions -- helping to eliminate the poverty in which Islamist militancy thrives.

But that's far closer to nation-building than to setting limited goals. And it's not what Obama said when he defined the purpose of sending  men and women to fight and die in Afghanistan. 

(Reuters file photos: President Barack Obama, and women in Taloqan in Afghanistan)

President Barack Obama, who is surrounded by women at home - wife Michelle and daughters Sasha and Malia – on Wednesday declared Girl Power a priority for the federal government.

In creating the White House Council on Women and Girls, which will include members of his Cabinet, Obama said he wanted to make sure that women and girls were treated fairly in all matters of public policy.

“We have many of those Cabinet members here. Some of the men showed up — we put them in the second row,” Obama said to laughter at an event to sign the executive order creating the council.

“I sign this order not just as a president, but as a son, a grandson, a husband, and a father, because growing up, I saw my mother put herself through school and follow her passion for helping others,” he said.

“But I also saw how she struggled to raise me and my sister on her own, worrying about how she’d pay the bills and educate herself and provide for us.”

The president said the first lady was “the rock of the Obama family” in juggling work and parenting.

“But I also saw how it tore at her at times, how sometimes when she was with the girls she was worrying about work, and when she was at work she was worrying about the girls.  It’s a feeling that I share every day,” Obama said.

“In so many ways, the stories of the women in my life reflect the broader story of women in this country — a story of both unyielding progress and also untapped potential.”

He also gave a nod to the woman he beat for the Democratic nomination for president, Hillary Clinton, who is now his Secretary of State, and to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Obama follows his family off Marine One)

First lady Michelle Obama took a turn in the spotlight Thursday, hosting a reception for a woman whose treatment at Goodyear prompted Congress to change the law on pay discrimination. 
 
It was one of the highest-profile public events for the first lady since the inauguration last week. And it was on behalf of a woman — Lilly Ledbetter — who got to know the first couple well during the presidential campaign.
 
President Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act into law in the East Room of the White House flanked by a small crowd of lawmakers, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
 
“This is what change looks like,” Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland joked to the audience as the lawmakers crowded around the document Obama was to sign.
 
The first lady later spoke about Ledbetter at a reception in the State Dining Room as guests sipped orange juice and cranberry juice and munched cherry orange scones, apple muffins and other pastries.
 
“She is one of my favorite people in the whole wide world,” Michelle Obama said. 
 
“She knew unfairness when she saw it and was willing to do something about it because it was the right thing to do, plain and simple.”
 
Ledbetter discovered after 19 years on the job at Goodyear Tire & Rubber that she was the lowest-paid supervisor at her plant despite having more experience than some male co-workers.
 
A jury found she was the victim of discrimination. But the Supreme Court reversed the decision two years ago, saying discrimination claims must be filed within 180 days of the first offense.
 
“I will never see a cent from my case,” Ledbetter said. “But with the passage (of the bill) and president’s signature today, I have an even richer reward. I know that my daughters and granddaughters and your daughters and your granddaughters will have a better deal.” 
 
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Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing (Michelle Obama greets guest); Reuters/Jim Bourg (Obama hands pen to Ledbetter after signing bill)

NEW YORK - Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire — that’s how Sen. Clinton put it on Thursday at a women’s breakfast where she joined the Democratic White House hopeful to campaign for him in New York.

She said Obama had noted that she looked rested since she ended her campaign against him for the Democratic nomination, and she told him she’d been exercising for a change.

“During the campaign …  Barack would get up faithfully every morning and go to the gym. I would get up and have my hair done,” she said as she introduced him.

“It’s one of those Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire things.”

Obama’s comment on Clinton when he took the stage: “She rocks.”

Clinton said the hard fought Democratic primary had been good for politics, boosting turnout and motivating more people than ever to vote.

“Anyone who voted for me has so much in common with those who voted for Barack, and it’s critical that we join forces,” Clinton said.

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Photo credit: Reuters/ Jim Young (Obama greets Clinton in Washington June 27)