The second presidential debate saw Mitt Romney and Barack Obama discussing many issues like oil, Libya, taxes and equality of women, but what got the world's attention: "binders full of women."
The Republican candidate Romney made the comment while talking about women equality.
Answering a question on pay equity for women, Romney said "women's groups brought him 'binders full of women' when he, as the governor of Massachusetts, was looking for qualified women to fill his cabinet."
His comment, which many termed a badly chosen phrase, has been trending in the social media since then.
Twitter saw an immediate influx of tweets and as Huffington Post reports "binders" and "binders full of women" were being mentioned at one point in the evening more than 40,000 times in one minute (according to data from Topsy, a social web analytics).
Shortly a new Tumblr account was launched with images inspired by the comment, many fake "Binders Full of Women" Facebook accounts were created, and BindersFullofWomen.com domain name was purchased just minutes after the comment was made.
The first Facebook page on "Binders Full Of Women" drew over 20,000 likes in half an hour and has more than 179,000 on Wednesday.
"We took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. 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," Romney said when the debating presidential candidates were asked about how they would address gender inequalities in the workplace. "We're going to have to have employers in the new economy, in economy I'm going to bring into play, that are going to be so anxious to get good workers that they're going to be anxious to hire women."
He explained that when there is big demand for workers, employers won't mind "adapting to a flexible work schedule that gives women the opportunities that otherwise they would not be able to afford."
Talking over the topic, Obama narrated the familiar story of his grandmother about whom the President once said, "she read me the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence and told me about the men and women who marched for equality because they believed those words put to paper two centuries ago should mean something."
"Women are increasingly the breadwinners in the family," he said. "(And so) This is not just a women's issue, this is a family issue. This is middle class issue, and that's why we've got to fight for it."
