President Trump’s eldest daughter Ivanka has been championing women’s empowerment and equal pay nearly everywhere she had the occasion to speak. However, the gender pay gap is still a big issue within the place where her dad works – the White House.
Female Workforce Underpaid at the White House
According to a recent report, female staff members working at the White House make “82 cents on the dollar” when compared to men. Surprisingly, the report was the work of a conservative advocacy group – The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) even though many Republicans believe that the report was something only Nancy Pelosi or Elizabeth Warren could come up with.
AEI based their report on the data any administration is legally required to submit to Congress every year by July 1. The data must include the salary and office position of every White House staffer. The data is a good place to start when analyzing the gender pay gap of senior officials.
Previous Estimates Were Incorrect
AEI also found that the salaries of men and women working for Trump had been incorrectly assessed by Roll Call and CNN in 2017. For example, Roll Call found that, on average, White House female staffers make “80 cents on the dollar”.
AEI’s lead researcher Prof. Mark J. Perry found that the group’s report is incorrect because the analysis was tainted by a statistical research flaw. Months later, the Pew Research Center got the numbers right. According to Pew, female staff members make $0.82 on the dollar.
What’s more, Perry underlined that both Roll Call and CNN underestimated the gender pay gap at the White House because they used mean earnings instead of actual salaries. When using median earnings the gender pay gap is 19.6%, but when using median salaries, the gender pay gap jumps to 36.8%.
Image Source: Wikimedia
