Right wing blogs are jumping all over themselves to publicize an op-ed stating that McCain pays his female staffers more than he pays the male staffers, unlike Obama who does the opposite. The op-ed also says McCain has a higher number of female advisors than does Obama.
This site talks about averages, not equal pay for equal work. It does not describe service time, management versus non-management and other reasons for the salaries. It also does not say that the pay for staff is highly structured for members of Congress.
Here are the figures conservative bloggers are focusing on:
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.
[O]n 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.
This story is not making the mainstream news. I found only two hits on Google News. One commenter to another op-ed about this business works as a statistician, and that person corrected the numbers:
RawleyCoop 1:50AM Sep 14th 2008
Mark Impomeni, I have to agree with a number of your responders, your posts lately have been sounding like mass email sleaze. I've read a lot of posts by you that are insightful and well researched (even when I disagree with them), so I know you are better then this. Please stop posting sludge like this, it is beneath you.
As for the content of the post. Let me say that I am a professional statistician (everyone has to do something for a living). And in my experience, when you have data with this many variables and variation, you could make almost any point you want and make it sound reasonable. Depending on how you cherry pick methods to add things up, you can make it seem like Senator Obama pays women staffers more, less, or the same as male staffers. But it is all smoke and mirrors.
First rule of statistics, don't guess at what might be happening, go back to the source data. So that is what I did. I pulled up the numbers you quoted from
http://www.legistorm.com .
Let me caveat this with I wasn't always sure which staffers were male and which were female (based only on their first name). I'm not sure how the person you are quoting did it. Whenever possible, I’ll give the person’s first name and let you decide.
Obama has 58 staffers, with 34 different job titles and a very wide range of salaries. His two highest paid positions are his "Administrative Manager" (Carolyn at $100K) and his "Legislative Director" (Christopher at $120K). But he also has "Staff Assistant"s earning under $15K (about equally divided between men and women). But the question is equal pay for EQUAL WORK, so comparing completely different jobs tells us nothing.
Of the 5 staff titles where he has more than 2 people with the same title (and therefore probably "equal work"), women seem to get as many high (and low) salaries as men do. For example: The highest paid "Constituent Services Agent" was Scott. The highest paid "Legislative Correspondent" was Crystal. The highest paid "Special Assistant" was Joan. The highest paid "Staff Assistant" was Jeffery. And the four highest paid (same salary) "Legislative Assistant"s were Dora, Henry, Adam, and Daniel.
I also performed all the usual statistical tests and confirmed the same results: There is no statistical evidence that Senator Obama pays men more than women for the same job titles (take my word for it, or perform the tests yourself).
Let me say that I also looked at the staff salaries of Senator McCain's staff. He has less staff positions (43) than Senator Obama but a lot more interns. His staff is about equally divided between men and women. His two highest paid positions are his "Legislative Director" (Ann at $130K) and his "Administrative Assistant" (Mark at $160K). He has only 19 job titles, with 4 being shared by 2+ staffers. This is because 18 of his staff have the simple title of "Staff Assistant" with salaries ranging from $18K to $60K, so I think it is safe to say that not all his "Staff Assistant"s are the same job or have "equal work".
But the bottom line is that Senator McCain's staff seems pretty equal between men and women at every level, and it seems that in his office men and women get equal pay for equal work (just like in Senator Obama's office).
So Mark, this is another of your non-stories. Just another twisting of numbers to see something that isn't really there.
Now if you can find an impartial source who shows clear statistical evidence of some sexism in how Senator Obama or Senator McCain give out salaries, then you might have a story. But what you have now is nothing.
Here's another comment correcting the numbers:
Ellery 12:16AM Sep 14th 2008
Wait, I work for the government. These workers are civil servents and our pay is determined by a government scale. McCain has been in the same senate position / office longer and it is likely his staff has been working for him longer which would mean that their pay scale has increased incrementally over time, as step raises. Obama a has been in the senate less time and if they are newly hired, his staff may be paid at a lower step in the salary scale because of less years served. You also have to do some more fact checking to see the positions these individials hold. How many males are administrative assistants compared to females within McCains or Obama's offices. Do the same investigations with each level position and match these poistion with time worked all the way up to the higher level positions, e.g. lawyers, etc. You can't just add up the salaries by gender and state these things as facts without more research conducted. I want the facts and not the theatrics.
McCain has 177 lobbyists running his campaign. The McCain Seven - all lobbyists - "control the campaign filling roles from senior foreign policy advisor and finance co-chair all the way up to head of command, campaign manager. The McCain Seven make sure special interests come first."
One of those lobbyists is Nancy Pfotenhauer, former President of the right-wing, anti-feminist Independent Women's Forum.
IWF has gone as far as to outright deny that there is a pay gap!
"A study of the gender wage gap conducted by economist June O' Neill, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, found that women earn 98 percent of what men do when controlled for experience, education, and number of years on the job."
IWF conveniently left out the fact that the 98% figure refers to recent college grads in low-paying, entry level jobs. These are people who have never married, with no children, and little job experience. In those kinds of jobs, women earn 98% of what men earn. As they progress in their careers, marry, and have children, women's wages drop to 77 cents to the man's dollar. This drop is due to both discrimination against women and women taking on the bulk of the responsibilities inherent in childrearing that men overall do not take on.
Here's my cite: "The Pay Gap - Causes, Consequences and Actions New Brunswick Advisory Council on the Status of Women" (Canada). This is a PDF file.
Excerpt:
Both sexes begin their careers with similar, low, earnings. It is after their mid-twenties that the gap progressively widens. Canadian women aged 15 to 24 who worked full-time full-year in 1994 earned $19,269, 90% of what men earn, while women aged 55 and over earned $26,000, 65% of what men earn. As women age, their earnings remain almost static.
Marital status is another, related, factor. Never-married (single but not necessary childless) women who work full-time earn 92% of what never-married men earn: both earn a relatively low wage. Never-married men, never-married women and married women all earn approximately the same (in Canada, $28-30,000; in N.B., $22-23,000 in full-time annual earnings), significantly less than married men (in Canada, $43,300; in N.B., about $37,000). Married men have higher average earnings than all other groups of men and women. No group of women, whether never-married, married, separated, young or old, earn as much as married men.
The relatively small population of never-married women aged 35 to 44 who work full-time full-year earn $32,200, which is 85% of what never-married men their age earn and 72% of what all men their age earn; never-married women aged 45 to 54 earn $36,000, which is 93% of what never-married men their age earn and 78% of what all men their age earn. Higher levels of education correlate with higher earnings for both men and women. Women with post-secondary qualifications have higher average earnings than other women, but they have lower earnings than similarly qualified men. Canadian women with university degrees who worked full-time full-year in 1994 earned $40,252 or 72% of what men earned.
(Never-married, therefore mostly young, women with university degrees who worked full-time full-year earned $38,871 or 95% of what their never-married male counterparts earned in 1994. Married university-educated females, an older group, earned 68% of what their male counterparts earned.) A study of one class of university graduates revealed that the women's earnings were slightly higher on average than the men's, but even for these highly educated workers, the gap widened progressively over time.
Once that 98% pay parity nonsense was thoroughly debunked, IWF resorted to blaming mothers for their "lifestyle choices".
Nancy Pfotenhauer blames women's "choices" for any lower pay they may earn. The real pay gap is between MOTHERS and others, not women and men. Photenhauer does not acknowledge that these are not "choices" but responsibilities that mothers undertake much more often than fathers, but fathers do not see their salaries or promotions suffering the way mothers do. But according to Pfotenhauer, when women earn less than men, it is their fault.
In an IWF press release criticizing Equal Pay Day, Pfotenhauer said, "Equal Pay Day propagates the myth that all women are helpless victims of discrimination. It ignores how the choices women make affect their pay," said Nancy Pfotenhauer, president of IWF. "Knowledge is power. Knowing how their decisions determine their earnings gives women a roadmap to earning more money."
She further blamed women for "choices" without acknowledging that fathers do not take on the same kinds of sacrifices that mothers take on, resulting in fewer opportunities and lower salaries for mothers:
"Women tend to make lifestyle choices that are different than men," Pfotenhauer continued. "Women take time out of the work force to care for children. Women gravitate toward careers that provide greater flexibility and require less travel and relocation. Women take fewer safety risks on the job. These are fine decisions, but they are decisions that mean that women on average will earn less money."
At least Pfotenhauer admits that mothers take on more of the childrearing responsibilities overall than fathers do. That's why, when couples divorce, mothers most often get custody of the children. But that's a hot button topic I'm not going to dive into today.
Let me say that I am not thrilled with Obama. I would have preferred that Hillary Clinton won the Democratic top spot, and if she had, I would vote for her in November. Be that as it may, I cannot help but notice the right wing hypocrisy when it comes to the wage gap. Now that the Republicans have a woman on the ticket, they've completely changed their stance. Right wing bloggers have gone as far as twisting numbers related to Obama's staffers to wrongly paint him as being hypocritical about the wage gap, probably in the hope that the McCain/Palin ticket will attract more women. Suddenly, Republicans are in support of equal pay for equal work when all this time a major anti-feminist women's group that has bolstered the Republican party outright denied that equal pay is an issue! The former president of that group is one of McCain's top seven lobbyists. Such "change" coming from McCain, who is on the record for opposing an Equal Pay bill, even though he says he's "all in favor of pay equity for women," is a slap in the face to women. If he really does support pay equity, why does he have on his team a lobbyist who was president of an anti-feminist group that denied the pay gap exists at all?
