Elizabeth Warren usually commemorates Equal Pay Day with an impassioned speech on the U.S. Senate floor.
On April 4 of this year, however, the Massachusetts Democrat who is an outspoken foe of income inequality and the gender pay gap apparently made no mention of equal pay.
Pay discrimination has been illegal in the U.S. for 50-plus years.
Whether connected or not, the notable omission came after a Washington Free Beacon report of a gender pay gap in the potential 2020 presidential candidate’s office.
“The gender pay gap in Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s office is nearly 10 percent wider than the national average.., However, women working for Warren were paid just 71 cents for every dollar paid to men during the 2016 fiscal year…The median annual earnings for women staffers, $52,750, was more than $20,000 less than the median annual earnings for men, $73,750, according to the analysis of publicly available Senate data. When calculated using average salaries rather than median, the pay gap expands to just over $26,051, or about 31 percent. Consistent with previous Free Beacon analyses of Senate salary data, only full-time staffers who were employed for the entire period in question were included in the calculations.”
Last year, Sen. Warren described Equal Pay Day on Twitter as a national day of embarrassment, but has apparently made no public comment this time around since the Beacon posted its assessment.
The Huffington Post reached a different conclusion, claiming that the equal pay champion paid men slightly more than women in her office, a finding that the Beacon insisted was based on flawed data .
A follow-up in The Daily Beast pointed out that there are a number of women in key positions on her congressional office and campaign staff. “When looking at pay records over the last four years, there was no ridiculous discrepancy in median incomes by gender, particularly when noting duration of employment….However, there are still worrisome trends in Warren’s employment practices. If you look at those paid most highly…there are more men than women at the top.”
As the Inquisitr previously outlined, gender pay allegations also emerged in the Obama White House , the Clinton Foundation , and Hillary Clinton’s Senate office , in which in the latter case the differential was found to be 28 percent.
“Unlike Warren and many liberals, I don’t think pay disparity necessarily means bad intentions. Perhaps the senator hired the people best for each job instead of giving a specific demographic a leg up. But if that is the case, she should realize that many other organizations do that too. It doesn’t necessarily show horrific, sexist business practices,” the Daily Beast writer noted about the Elizabeth Warren equal pay issue.
Apart from the often arbitrariness of the workplace that can impact both genders, the Inquisitr , The Daily Beast , and the New York Post, along with other outlets , maintain that factors aside from gender bias — such as industry, seniority, and/or hours worked — may play a role in the gender pay gap.
Separately, in running against then-Senator Scott Brown in 2012, Elizabeth Warren insisted that she was 1/32 Cherokee, but no formal corroboration of this claim’s validity has emerged. There are allegations that Warren nonetheless used her “minority” status to obtain important law teaching positions at several Ivy League universities under affirmative action. Last year, a prominent Native American writer referred to Warren as a “ Pretendian .” In 2012, Cherokee genealogist Twila Barnes asserted that no authentication existed for Warren’s purported Native American heritage.
Last month, a Brown University professor of Native American descent called out Elizabeth Warren for allegedly being “complicit in racism” for her alleged silence on discrimination against Native Americans, the Social Memo recalled .
The self-described inventor of email, computer scientist and MIT graduate Shiva Ayyadurai, who has also described himself as a “real Indian,” is one of several Massachusetts Republicans who has announced a challenge to Elizabeth Warren when she is up for election in 2018, Boston Magazine reported . Former Boston Red Sox star Curt Schilling is also considering a bid to unseat the incumbent U.S. senator and Trump administration critic.
[Featured Image by Steven Senne/AP Images]