Conservatives made hay over the White House push for gender pay equity after a study highlighted its own wage gap between the sexes, but they were missing part of the picture.
The Washington Examiner explained Thursday that although an American Enterprise Institute study showed that female staffers earned 88 cents for every dollar their male counterparts earned last year, the salary data also showed that women actually out-earned men among the highest-paid White House staffers.
Based on the same 2013 salary data, the Examiner found that 70 of the 150 White House staffers making more than $100,000 were women. Those top female aides earned $128,600 on average compared to $120,600 for top male aides, the publication found.
As the Examiner pointed out, those salary figures represent an increase in the number and percentage of women in top-earning White House positions over the last two years.
Ten of the 19 highest-paid staffers in the White House in 2013 were women who all pulled in $172,200, including senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and deputy chief of staff Lisa Monaco, according to the Examiner. Compare that to seven women who earned the same salary in 2011 along with 14 men.
White House spokesman Jay Carney defended the White House gender pay gap Monday ahead of Democrats’ push for equal pay on both the executive and legislative fronts.
“What I can tell you is that we have as an institution here have aggressively addressed this challenge, and obviously, though, at the 88 cents that you cite, that is not a hundred, but it is better than the national average,” Carney said, as quoted by the Washington Post. “And when it comes to the bottom line that women who do the same work as men have to be paid the same, there is no question that that is happening here at the White House at every level.”
