Analysis: White House Women Are Paid Less Than Men
Jul 16th, 2009 | 16 responses
To Love My Country has posted an analysis about White House salaries, based on a previously released list that came from the White House (talk about excellent primary source blogging).
First, the idea behind the post, as explained by the blogger:
The commentary here is intended to provoke thought about why men dominate the higher positions– where’s the disconnect? Is it women not majoring in Poli Sci at the same rates? Is it post-graduation job choices? Is it because the last administration to serve in was the predom. male Clinton administration? This post is a question, not an answer.
The comments on the thread are worth reading as well for more explanations.
So what did Ariel Boone find (but please, go read the entire post, in context; emphasis shown below is in the original):
- NUMBERS OF FEMALE AND MALE STAFF ARE EQUAL: Out of a total of 487 employees, women comprise 49.9% of the White House staff!…
- WOMEN EARN LESS: On average, a White House woman earns $9,390 less than a White House man….A woman’s median WH salary is $57,314, while a man’s median WH salary is $65,000….
- WOMEN ARE IN LOWER PAID POSITIONS: in the lowest earning brackets, $30,000-$59,999, the number of female employees outstrips the number of men.
And some notes from Ariel at the end:
- Besides making “assumptions” about the 487 names, there were about 50 gender-ambiguous names (Ashley, Jamia, Tracy, etc) that I researched to confirm the person’s pronouns. I do realize this process is not trans-inclusive. Numbers and the data table have been edited since the original posting to reflect 3 miscategorized employees.
- Patricia McGinnis and Michael Warren were counted into the total number of employees, but not into the salary averages and medians, as both earned $0.00
- The total percentage of staff includes detailees, but the average salary does not. Detailees are essentially employees on loan from other federal agencies, whose salaries are determined and paid for by the other agencies.
So now what? Few people if any will find this information surprising. The question is: what needs to be changed and how do we change it?
Matt Yglesias at ThinkProgress links to Ariel’s work too and there are some good comments in that thread.
What do you think?
Cross-posted from Writes Like She Talks.
16 Responses to “Analysis: White House Women Are Paid Less Than Men”
I like the part where point #3 undermines #2. What happens to the discrepancy when we take all the people in one particular position?
Actually, screw it. Obama's just a closet misogynist. Happy?
Does Obama give his people health benefits? (Also, was plenty of “free” time not merely appreciated [which is cheap], but in fact _expected_ (excuse me, _anticipated_) of people during his campaign?)
Ryan – that's interesting, your interpretation. I don't see #3 undermining #2 – I think they are supportive of each other. As for your snarky, “Happy?” I'm assuming you really don't my history with having voted for Obama but I'll respond anyway: Do you imagine that I'd be happy?
Ryan — at least in this instance with Team Obama, all the numbers were real, rather than “projections.”
[chuckling at more bad numbers, at least until considering that these people, and maybe ACORN as well as other activists, will be in charge of the 2010 Census]
If women are in positions that pay less then there's your “women earn less on average” taken care of. Unless there is a separate discrepancy that exists such that women earn less than men when all other factors (most prominently, the nature of the job) then the women don't really “earn less” at all. You ask what needs to change, as though you're assuming that something must need to change which can be made to change. From reading your posts over the past while it seems that you're all over the metrics – here, we have the median man's salary 13% higher than the median woman's, therefore something needs to be fixed. If you are able to find some level at which women are unfairly discriminated against – say, a particular person who will frequently choose a less-qualified man when filling positions – then by all means address it. But taking a single number leaves you no way of determining how much of the disparity is for “fair” reasons (self-selection, equality lag, randomness). I imagine that you are happy to the extent that you think women are being treated fairly, but my point is that you appear to be relying too heavily on the measure of equality instead of actual equality.
These numbers are worthless. Unless you are comparing the same positions, the math is pointless. You can argue that there aren't enough women in high paying jobs in the White House, but you can't say that they are being paid less for the same work.
The nation as a whole has a problem with underpaying women, or overpaying men, for the same work. Sadly, this math doesn't do anything to back up the case.
“Sadly, this math doesn't do anything to back up the case.”
We can let that slide, though, Jill. Everyone Knows Men Are Better With Figures. [grin]
Well, if the women are actually, on average, dumber and lazier and do less work because they're always taking time off to have babies and “female problems” then aren't the numbers about right?
(Jazz runs away as fast as he possibly can to hide under a rock in Northern Saskatchewan before Jill finds him.)
Jill doesn't know where I am, other than “in Detroit metro” (a safely huge and anonymous 5-million-strong metro area that nobody elsewhere thinks about, as with Philadelphia, its proper sister city and metro), so she's not in a position in my case to go hire those wranglers yet.
Actually, Jazz, while I've had all kinds of bosses in my work life (including *gasp* black and female bosses, multiple, in fact), I did have one guy for a boss who was a great boss, except he was sexist, and the many female co-workers of mine did _not_ like that. (Didn't stop them from having kids, though.)
Thanks for all the comments – everyone has a POV here that could probably be supported by whichever numbers and sets of circumstances they choose to look at. As for speculation about me, I just don't go in for most of that kind of thing so you'll have to accept that I'm going to ignore it. I'm not about flame wars – I'd far rather further the conversation about the topic at hand than pick on people personally.
In the case of the post that I highlighted, written by someone else, information put out by the WH was analyzed by that one person and she included in her posts what her assumptions where and gave her POV on those numbers once she crunched them. I don't see a lot to argue with in terms of what she's concluded, from her POV. It's a not surprise, it's consistent with what we know about pretty much all places of employment -private, academic, government and the issue remains the same: women who perform the same work as men, all things controlled being equal, are paid less. Why should this be acceptable to anyone? What if it was the reverse, and men were paid less for performing the same work? That's not any more acceptable.
The secondary issue has to do with the overrepresentation of women in the lower paying jobs. That's not acceptable either – I stand by my question about what can be changed to address that.
I continue to not understand why people go through such machinations to defend unfair employment practices. I feel the same way about employer responsibility related to the use and abuse of illegal immigrants as labor. Both practices are just wrong – whether it's Obama, Goodyear or Agriprocessors.
Jill, you've identified an outcome, not a practice. Even the blog article you linked says “these figures say nothing of hiring practices.” So what specific practices are you wanting to see changed?
Dr J -
I am, admittedly, not a human resource specialist, though I have hired people in the past and in fact, three very prominent hires I made over ten years ago when I worked as Director of Risk Management at a large children and family mental health agency are still at that agency, in higher positions. All three are women.
How do we get change? Well, who is doing the hiring? Where are they looking to hire? What are they using as reasons to cross-over potential hirees? I imagine that there are books and articles galore written on how to create a diverse workforce – in fact, I know there are because I've seen SHRM publications and other HR magazines and nearly every issue has something on diversity.
If employers want diversity to happen, then they can commit to hiring practices that assure that diversity is achieved, even if over time. Again, there are publications even called “Diversity.” There are Fortune and Forbes and other biz pubs that frequently detail which companies do the best job in being diverse etc.
This isn't rocket science or new. It's a matter of commitment.
Jill, I think you're right. Hiring decisions involve a mixture of merit, guesswork, and emotion, and in few cases is diversity a primary goal. So despite all the lip service, commitment is lacking. Organizations (at least the ones that value performance) prioritize job performance (or their best guess about it) way, way ahead of diversity for diversity's sake.
Personally I support their priorities. I'm not committed to diversity for diversity's sake; I'd rather the white house and every other organization focus on getting the job done. Capable, motivated women can and do earn top roles.
Totally, truly agree w/you re: focus on getting the job done. The angle that people like me try to make appear for others is the sense that the people being selected to get the job done do not represent the diversity that does in fact exist within a talent pool. And why wouldn't such individuals be selected? That's another layer of the onion to peel, but in part, it's often because the people making the selections aren't diverse. Now – there's a lot of debate about this – can men be feminists bla bla bla kind of thing. Yes, a majority white country elected Barack Obama and of course there are many other examples, thank goodness.
But still – look at the legal profession and who heads law firms – compared to who goes to law school. Look at CEOs of the Fortune 1000 and who gets an MBA. There's an imbalance between the numbers getting trained and the numbers getting hired.
I can't unpack that all because I don't know all the numbers etc. But again, I don't write about this issues to be a harpy, I write about them because they are everywhere and they don't have to be but it does, as you say, require commitment.
I am committed to diversity for diversity sake in some circumstances. I have been asked to speak on panels and said, you know, there's a Latina woman I know who would be as good or better, or there's an African-American woman I know who would be better. (Yes, I do sometimes say there are guys I know who would be better – but I'm often being asked specifically because I'm a woman and then I'm asked to give conveners names of other women – what can I tell you!?)
Anyway – I think you get my point – I'm sure you do from what you've written and you've made a really valuable distinction in terms of how and whether people think about these issues.
I can't speak for all of womankind of course, but I think the general idea is that if we HAD a critical mass of women IN the pipelines for all these roles, then the diversity commitment wouldn't be quite as incumbent. But it's true – there's a lot of debate on this, and that's reasonable.
Thanks for taking the time to comment and respond.
Jill, don't know if you're familiar with in this area, but I found it interesting.
Farrell studied what people get paid more for and identified 25 factors that matter. You earn more for working longer hours, for jobs that expose you to the elements or other hazards, for being available to relocate far away, or for doing technical work rather than people work. He found men tended to make choices that maximize income, whereas women make choices that favor safety and flexibility, among other factors.
The kicker: once you consider those factors in making comparisons, women are actually *better* paid than men.
I'm a proponent of Ellen Bravo's work. I'm not familiar w/Farrell's and would need to spend time looking it over so thanks for the links.