In March, President Trump overturned an Obama-era protection for women in the workplace that, among other things, made sexual harassment more public. Another aspect of that protection called for paycheck transparency and free discussion of wages and benefits without fear of reprisal. According to a report compiled by a conservative think tank, the pay gap between male and female White House staffers has tripled since Trump’s presidency started.
Per the report, the median salary of a male staffer in the White House is $115,000 compared to $72,650, meaning “the typical female staffer in Trump’s White House earns 63.2 cents per $1 earned by a typical male staffer.” This 37% gap is more than double the national average, higher than the national pay gap was nearly 40 years ago. The pay gap was 16% at the start of the Obama presidency and peaked at 18% in 2014, but was at 11% during the last year of the Obama administration.
The reason for the gap, both inside and outside the White House, is that men and women are hired for different types of jobs. In the White House, specifically, men occupy more high-level positions:
The highest-paid staffers in the Trump White House are primarily men: Nearly 74 percent of the top 23 staffers are male. By contrast, in the Obama White House of 2015 only 52 percent of the highest-paid staffers were men.
Ivanka Trump, an unpaid White House staffer, earlier this year said that the gender pay gap needs to be closed and “women deserve equal pay for equal work.”
The gender wage gap is the result of a number of factors, but it being so starkly on display in the White House certainly isn’t helping matters.
(via Washington Post)