Women In The Obama White House Reportedly Earn 15 Percent Less Than Men

Female employees in the Obama White House reportedly earn 84 cents for every dollar in salary made by their male counterparts.

Each year at this time, the administration is required by law to disclose salaries paid to White House staffers, of which there are currently 474. The average salary is about $85,000.

Last year at this time, the Washington Post claimed that the White House gender pay gap was 13 percent. The Obama administration insisted at the time that men and women in the White House who do the same or an equivalent job receive equal pay for equal work. This is the kind of response that ironically the administration would probably be unwilling to accept if it was offered up by a private sector business caught in the government regulatory crosshairs, however.

In an analysis of the new White House salary data, the American Enterprise Institute suggested that a glass ceiling might exist at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

“By gender, the median salary for the 263 female White House employees is $65,650 and the median salary for the 209 male staffers is $78,000 (see chart above). Therefore, female staffers in the Obama White House currently earn 84.2% of the median salary for male staffers, or 84.2 cents for every $1 men earn, and there is a 15.8% gender pay gap at the White House… Stated in dollars, the typical female staffer working in the Obama White House earns $12,350 less on average per year than the typical male staffer…”

Pay discrimination on the basis of gender has been illegal in the U.S. since 1963, although Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and other like-minded politicians have called for more regulations to address what they argue constitutes income inequality, gender discrimination, and accordingly to close the pay gap between men and women in the workforce.

In a September 2011 Time article, journalist Amy Sullivan claimed that the White House was a “boys’ club” and that President Obama had a “woman problem.” A lot obviously could have changed in the intervening four years, but at the time she wrote that “Obama himself is responsible for a work atmosphere that marginalizes and ignores women.”

As previously reported by the Inquisitr, the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation (formerly the Clinton Foundation) supposedly pays female employees 63 cents for every dollar that male employees make based on 2013 IRS tax documents. According to some numbers-crunching performed by the Washington Free Beacon, Hillary Clinton allegedly paid female staffers in her U.S. Senate office 28 percent less than men during her term of office from 2001 through 2008.

The AEI study claims the President Obama can’t have it both ways on the gender pay gap.

“[E]ither: a) there are gender pay differences throughout the economy and in any organization including at the White House, which can be explained by factors other than gender discrimination including age, years of continuous work experience, education, differences in positions, hours worked, marital status, number of children, workplace environment and safety, industry differences, etc., or b) any gender pay gap in aggregate, unadjusted salaries automatically exposes gender discrimination – including the White House – and Obama needs to explain why he is ‘waging a war on his women staffers’ by paying them less than men on average.”

[Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images News]