During his State of the Union remarks on Tuesday, President Barack Obama remarked, “Today, Women make up about half our workforce. But they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it’s an embarrassment.
A woman deserves equal pay for equal work.” However, as the president made his demand, women who work at the White House continue to make less money than their male counter-parts. According to the D.C. based American Enterprise Institute, female White House staffers are paid less than 87 cents for every dollar paid to men who work at the White House. This is a significant gender wage gap of more than 13 percent AEI notes.
This wage gap at the White House is not new. The UK’s Daily Mail reported in 2012:
The gender differential has been noticed outside of the White walls, and Dee Dee Myers- the first female press secretary who worked under the Clinton administration- feels it is not doing Mr Obama’s team any favors.
‘Women are Obama’s base, and they don’t seem to have enough people who look like the base inside of their own inner circle,’ Dee Dee Myers told The New York Times.
The hefty salaries, like Ms Jarrett’s, were not the norm, however, as the median salary for women in the White House is $60,000 which is 18 per cent less than their male peers whose median salary was $71,000.
Regardless of these salary numbers at the White House, President Obama commented during his remarks it was time to “do away with workplace policies that belong in a Mad Men episode.”
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