Female employees of Obama for America earned less on average than male employees during the months of May and June, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis of the campaign’s public filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
The Obama reelection campaign’s female employees earned an average of $6,872 during that period, compared with an average of $7,235 for male employees. That is a difference of $363, or 5.3 percent.
The annualized pay difference is more than $2,100 per year.
The difference in the median earnings of male and female workers during May and June was also about 5 percent. The median male salary for the period under review was $6,568, compared with $6,280 for female employees—an annualized difference of more than $1,728.
The Free Beacon calculated the figures using data from publicly available FEC filings. After separating employees by gender, the mean and median figures for each group were calculated using commonly accepted formulas. A default gender of male was assigned in cases in which gender could not be determined, though this was only done in six instances.
The pay disparity is consistent with other Free Beacon analyses, which found that female employees of both the White House and Democratic lawmakers were consistently paid less than their male peers.
Women working for Democratic Senators made about $6,500 (10 percent) less on average than male staff members in 2011, public records show. Several prominent Democrats, such as Sens. Patty Murray (D., Wash.), Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), and Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), paid their female employees more than 20 percent less on average.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) paid her female staffers almost 30 percent less on average than males staffers in 2011.
The pay disparity was especially pronounced among employees of the White House. The median female salary there in 2011 was about $11,000 (18 percent) less than the median male salary.
A number of prominent Democratic politicians have accused the Republican Party of actively waging a "war on women," citing GOP opposition to legislation that would make it easier for trial lawyers to file class action lawsuits against employers for alleged pay discrimination.
Experts told the Free Beacon that the so-called "Paycheck Fairness Act," which the Senate failed to advance in June, would have been a significant boon to the trial lawyer industry, a highly influential Democratic client group that is the number one source of campaign contributions for all but five members of the Senate Democratic caucus.