If you follow the White House on Twitter, you’ve likely seen multiple tweets calling for #EqualPay for women in our country. Just yesterday, the account posted a quote from President Obama: “Let’s make sure women earn pay equal to their efforts.”
However, the Obama administration is engaging in a bit of hypocrisy by encouraging equal wages for women while simultaneously paying female White House workers less than their male counterparts. What’s worse, Obama hasn’t done anything to eliminate or lessen this wage gap since his first year in office, according to a new Washington Post analysis of salary data.
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Currently, the average yearly salary for a male employee of the White House stands at $88,600, while that for a female employee is over $10,000 less — a 13% drop — at $78,400.
In 2009, that same 13% wage gap existed. Male employees were paid an average of $82,000 annually, and female employees earned $72,700.
Additionally, according to the data, the White House hires more men to fill senior positions. While 87 male officials have salaries exceeding $100,000, only 53 female workers make more than this amount. This means that each higher-paying position is over 1.5 times more likely to be filled by a man.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest acknowledged the White House’s pay gap during Wednesday’s press briefing, admitting that they have “some improvement to make along that measure.”
Yet, he defended the White House, saying it does a “significantly better” job than the private sector does at working toward equal pay.
“The people who have the same title make the same amount,” asserted Earnest. “Essentially, they get equal pay for equal work. There’s no question that’s the case.”
The president himself has made a point to stress the need for equal pay, most recently emphasizing the issue at an June event in Pittsburgh.
He even suggested that his wife Michelle is an example, albeit a “bad” one, of the gender pay gap.
“I will say, the first lady is kind of a bad example, because the first lady doesn’t get paid. And she works pretty hard,” Obama explained. “Obviously, we’re OK.”
This is all yet another example of how the Obama administration has been utterly weak and unproductive. Though the president speaks of the gender wage gap, he doesn’t do anything about it in his own office. Shouldn’t a president lead by example?
