February 23, 2015

Women working in Hillary Clinton's Senate office were paid 72 cents for every dollar paid to a man.

"During those years, the median annual salary for a woman working in Clinton’s office was $15,708.38 less than the median salary for a man, according to the analysis of data compiled from official Senate expenditure reports."

I'm sure she can explain that based on things like education, seniority, and experience, but the problem is that's the explanation that undercuts the whole equal pay agenda. 

34 comments:

tim maguire said...

And that is why it will never be picked up by a "real" news organization.

Heartless Aztec said...

And the media will be asking her questions about that...when? Never.

Jane the Actuary said...

Agreed -- when someone confronts an equal pay activist with the impact of personal choice (choosing higher or lower-paying professions, working more or fewer hours, scaling back or leaving to raise kids), they say that there are underlying issues: a "false consciousness" that leads women to make choices they shouldn't make, unsupportive fathers, etc.

Brando said...

Well, that's exactly it--how can Hillary pick up the SJW mantle that unequal pay is the result of discrimination if she has to offer the valid reasons for her not paying female staffers what she is paying male staffers?

MayBee said...

they say that there are underlying issues: a "false consciousness" that leads women to make choices they shouldn't make, unsupportive fathers, etc.

True.
Or they say women shouldn't have to make those choices- there should be extended paid maternity leave, nursing and milk pumping lounges, more money for daycare, all day kindergarten, and of course legal protections against women losing their jobs for absence when taking care of sick children.

MayBee said...

Well, that's exactly it--how can Hillary pick up the SJW mantle that unequal pay is the result of discrimination if she has to offer the valid reasons for her not paying female staffers what she is paying male staffers?

Obama and Valerie Jarrett do it every single day.

Valerie Jarrett had the gall to tweet-congratulate Patricia Arquette last night.

wendybar said...

Here are two stories that show it is a progressive liberal problem....

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/08/us/politics/as-obama-spotlights-gender-gap-in-wages-his-own-payroll-draws-scrutiny.html?_r=0

http://thefederalist.com/2015/02/23/we-dont-have-a-wage-gap-problem-but-hollywood-and-the-white-house-do/

SGT Ted said...

A petard and hoist DIY kit.

jr565 said...

72 cents? Isn't the average actually 77cents? So she's worse than the average. War on women! Patricia Arquette call Team Hillary.
In fairness to Hillary it's a useless statistic and there is no way you could have women earn exactly the same as men. But insofar as it lets us hoist Hillary on her peterd, I'm all for it.
Up yes, Hillary. Please explain to us why you are so hateful of women.

tim maguire said...

MayBee said...Or they say women shouldn't have to make those choices- there should be extended paid maternity leave, nursing and milk pumping lounges, more money for daycare, all day kindergarten, and of course legal protections against women losing their jobs for absence when taking care of sick children.

Those are some awesome choices. Too bad Hillary! didn't implement any of them.

pdug said...

So the real interesting leftover question is what happened in Clinton's office in 2005?

Any ideas? Was that the year she hired Huma Abedin, sometime girl-pal?

David said...

It's that whole "me-thee" thing that she never quite understands.

Brando said...

"Obama and Valerie Jarrett do it every single day."

This is what pisses me off about the GOP and their allies--there are excellent retorts to the "77 cents on the dollar" bleat, and they don't use them. When Romney was asked this question, and he says some "binders filled with women" nonsense (even if he hadn't made the verbal slip-up, it was a lame response about a public policy question) he missed a great opportunity. Point out that Obama pays his female staffers less than male staffers, and say that this proves either (1) Obama is a sexist or (2) there are other issues at stake that are not due to discrimination, and maybe it would do us more good to identify and alleviate those issues.

Every time this "pay discrimination" charge comes up, point out these examples--either the Left is horribly discriminatory towards women, or maybe something else is causing this discrepency.

MayBee said...

Those are some awesome choices. Too bad Hillary! didn't implement any of them.

Well, the thing about people like Hillary and Obama is they don't want to do things like this if somehow it hits their pocketbook. What they want is to implement laws so that taxpayers and corporations have to pay for things like this. But they personally, of course, have reasons for doing what they are doing. It's other people who do things out of hate for women.

I mean, I know you know this.

pm317 said...

See this is what I don't like. Obama has been doing the same thing with his WH staff but he never gets scrutinized. What the fuck!

MayBee said...

...and I don't want things like that to become law, because you end up taking money (and time) away from families who do want to make the choice for one parent to spend time at home with the kids.

Not to mention the unintended consequence of making businesses hesitant to hire young women. Like they used to be before all the laws "helping" women.

RonF said...

The problem with all of those choices is that they seek to turn employers into social services providers. The relation between a business and an employee is that the employee provides productivity to the employer and the employer provides money to the employee. All those services cost the employer money without providing productivity in return. That's one of the main reason that men earn more money than women even in what are putatively the same job - because the men work longer hours. The fact that societal roles such as care giving, etc. has some (but far from all) part in that discrepancy is not the employer's problem. He or she is still getting lower productivity out of one employee than another. They should not be forced to give as much money to a less productive employee than they give to a more productive one.

traditionalguy said...

The question should be whether Hillary's donation/bribes are only 72 cents on the dollar compared to Bill's while they raked in their $2.000,000,000 from Saudis etc.?

I understand the Haitians wish they could see a small part of 72 cents on the dollar of Relief Donations raked in by the Clintons using the earthquake victims as a cover.

But I do understand that procuring underage teens for political favors to rich friends can be expensive.

Big Mike said...

I suspect you have to pay men more to work with Hillary.

PB said...

Well, for Hillary or any Democrat, it's right and justifiable, but for everyone it's bias and discrimination.

MayBee said...

The problem with all of those choices is that they seek to turn employers into social services providers.

Exactly.
Why not just assume women (and men) are smart enough to make choices about having a family and how it will impact them. There is a cost/benefit analysis to be made.
Having a family isn't of zero benefit.

Tari said...

If it were really true that you could hire a woman to do the exact same job as a man and pay her 25% less, the private sector would be majority women at all levels, all the way up to VPs and beyond. These "equality" folks are the same people who say things like "corporations are evil because they only care about the bottom line." -- and then turn around and argue that those same greedy corporations pay more to get men because, well .... why, exactly?

Anonymous said...

Damn, Tari beat me to it.

I'm an evil capitalist, small business owner, and if I could get the same amount of high quality work out of a woman at 72% of the salary, I'd put that extra 28% profit in my large evil pockets. The entire staff would be female.

But it is not there. In fact, it is young married men that work harder and longer than anybody else. A combination of the ego from winning competitions and the desire to be good providers....

Larry J said...

If you hold liberals to their own values, you can destroy them. This case with Hillary!! reminds me of testimony during the Ginsburg confirmation hearings. She was asked by Orin Hatch about the use of statistical analysis to determine if workplace discrimination had taken place. He then could've destroyed her nomination had he chosen to press the point. From the Ginsburg Hearing transcripts (pages 131-132):

But I give you that example I did, because I have great faith in you. I have known you since 1980, and I have watched what you have done, I have admired you, I have no doubt that you are a person of total equality and a person who deserves to be on the Supreme Court.

But in response to the Judiciary Committee questionnaire, in the
13 years since you went on the bench in 1980, you have not had a single black law clerk or secretary or intern, out of 57 such employees that you have hired.
Now, I find no fault with that, because I know that there was no desire to discriminate, even though your court sits in the middle of a majority black city of Washington, DC.

Now, some, if they took the broad language of Abner Mikva in that case, might call that a manifest imbalance. Now, I would not suggest for a moment that that imbalance resulted from any intentional discrimination on your part. The crucial point to keep in mind, however, is that when the concept of discrimination is divorced from intent and we rely on statistics alone, a small business man or woman with your record of employing minorities might find himself or herself spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to fend off discrimination suits, and that in fact is what is happening around this country right now. Such an employer might adopt quotas or other forms of preferences in order to avoid or avert such litigation under any number of Federal civil rights laws. And I am worried about it, because it is not fair to the employer and it is not fair to the persons denied opportunities, because of preferences.

Naturally, I am concerned about preferences and I know you are and I know that you are a very good person. But I just want to point that out, because that happens every day all over this country, where there is no evidence of intent and, in fact, was no desire on the part of the employer to exclude anybody.

Judge GlNSBURG. I appreciate that, Senator Hatch, but I do want to say that I have tried to

Senator HATCH. I know you have.

Judge GlNSBURG. And I am going to try harder, and if you confirm me for this job, my attractiveness to black candidates is going to improve. [Laughter.]

Senator HATCH. That is wonderful. I like that. But let me just say you can see my point. These things are tough cases. They are difficult. There should be some evidence of intent.

Sam L. said...

What we won't read in the NYT or Wapo.

Peter said...

"that undercuts the whole equal pay agenda."

Except the agenda was never about "equal" pay, but about "equitable" pay.

Because the meaning of "equal" is just too constrained, as one inevitably wants "equal" to be adjusted for the type of work being done, as well as how much is done and how well it's done.

Whereas "equitable" can mean pretty much whatever you want it to mean.

Mark Caplan said...

In looking at how much women in Hillary's organization were earning, they forgot to count the tens of millions the queen herself and her foundation were raking in.

Alex said...

Hypocrisy, thy name is liberal.

Bricap said...

Is this about equal pay for equal work, or is it about equal opportunity for the higher paying staff positions?

Bob Ellison said...

There are lots of potential explanations.

Hillary sucks at hiring. Her women are only 72% as productive as her men.

Hillary hates women. She only pays her women 72% as much as her men.

Hillary...uh...only hires experienced men and newbie women.

Hillary hires her men to do big, tough, high-paying jobs, like fending off bullets coming at her with their bare hands, and saves the cushy, low-paying jobs, like bringing her coffee, for her women.

Hillary is an incompetent buffoon.

mccullough said...

JFK signed the Equal Pay Act into law in 1963.

When politicians talk about equal pay, they don't mean what voters understand as equal pay.

A media with rigorous free-thinkers would not let politicians spout this bullshit.

Left Bank of the Charles said...

Was Hillary's salary counted in these stats? She was the boss and probably made the most in her Senate office, so it's sexist if the stats treat her as if she doesn't exist.

MD Greene said...

I"m shocked -- shocked! -- to learn that there is gambling at Rick's.

mikee said...

How many of the women working for Hillary were raped, harassed, or threatened into silence about affairs with Bill?

Oh, that's right - Bill wasn't around, was he.

Never mind.