[DEBATE] : Gender Pay Gaps among Obama and McCain Campaign Staffers

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

<http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/378772_murdockonline12.html>
Last updated September 11, 2008 1:01 p.m. PT
Obama only talks good game on gender pay equity

DEROY MURDOCK

"Now is the time to keep the promise of equal pay for an equal day's
work," Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said Aug. 28 in
his convention acceptance speech. He told the crowd in Denver: "I want
my daughters to have exactly the same opportunities as your sons."

Obama's campaign website is even more specific. Under the heading
"Fighting for Pay Equity," the women's issues page laments that,
"Despite decades of progress, women still make only 77 cents for every
dollar a man makes. A recent study estimates it will take another 47
years for women to close the wage gap with men at Fortune 500
corporate offices. Barack Obama believes the government needs to take
steps to better enforce the Equal Pay Act..."

Obama's commitment to federally mandated pay equity stretches from the
Rockies to Wall Street and beyond. And yet it seems to have eluded his
Senate office. Compensation figures for his legislative staff reveal
that Obama pays women just 83 cents for every dollar his men make.

A watchdog group called LegiStorm posts online the salaries for
Capitol Hill staffers. "We have no political affiliations and no
political purpose except to make the workings of Congress as
transparent as possible," its website explains. Parsing LegiStorm's
official data, gleaned from the Secretary of the Senate, offers a
fascinating glimpse at pay equity in the World's Greatest Deliberative
Body.

The most recent statistics are for the half-year from Oct. 1, 2007 to
March 31, 2008, excluding interns and focusing on full-time personnel.
For someone who worked only until, say, last Feb. 29, extrapolating up
to six months' service simplifies this analysis. Doubling these
half-year figures illustrates how a year's worth of Senate employees'
paychecks should look.

Based on these calculations, Obama's 28 male staffers divided among
themselves total payroll expenditures of $1,523,120. Thus, Obama's
average male employee earned $54,397.

Obama's 30 female employees split $1,354,580 among themselves, or
$45,152, on average.

Why this disparity? One reason may be the under-representation of
women in Obama's highest-compensated ranks. Among Obama's five
best-paid advisors, only one was a woman. Among his top 20, seven were
women.

Again, on average, Obama's female staffers earn just 83 cents for
every dollar his male staffers make. This figure certainly exceeds the
77-cent threshold that Obama's campaign website condemns. However, 83
cents do not equal $1. In spite of this 17-cent gap between Obama's
rhetoric and reality, he chose to chide GOP presidential contender
John McCain on this issue.

Obama responded Aug. 31 to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's Republican
vice-presidential nomination. Palin "seems like a very engaging
person," Obama told voters in Toledo, Ohio. "But I've got to say,
she's opposed -- like John McCain is -- to equal pay for equal work.
That doesn't make much sense to me."

Obama's criticism notwithstanding, McCain's payment patterns are the
stuff of feminist dreams.

McCain's 17 male staffers split $916,914, thus averaging $53,936. His
25 female employees divided $1,396,958 and averaged $55,878.

On average, according to these data, women in John McCain's office
make $1.04 for every dollar a man makes. In fact, all other things
being equal, a typical female staffer could earn 21 cents more per
dollar paid to her male counterpart -- while adding $10,726 to her
annual income -- by leaving Barack Obama's office and going to work
for John McCain.

How could this be?

One explanation could be that women compose a majority of McCain's
highest-paid aides. Among his top-five best-compensated staffers,
three are women. Of his 20-highest-salaried employees, 13 are women.
The Republican presidential nominee relies on women -- much more than
men -- for advice at the highest, and thus, best-paid levels.

If anyone on McCain's Senate staff is unhappy, McCain's male staffers
might complain they seem to get a slightly raw deal.

In short, these statistics suggest that John McCain is more than fair
with his female employees, while Barack Obama -- at the expense of the
women who work for him -- quietly perpetuates the very same pay-equity
divide that he loudly denounces. Of all people, the Democratic
standard bearer should understand that equal pay begins at home.

Deroy Murdock is a columnist with Scripps Howard News Service and a
media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace
at Stanford University. E-mail him at deroy.Murdock at gmail.com