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Warren Calls for Equal Pay for Women, Fails to Mention Own History of Not Paying Staff Equally

Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) on Tuesday once again used Equal Pay Day to signal her support for equalizing the gender pay gap between men and women—without addressing her own history of failing to pay Senate staffers equally.

Warren went on Twitter to commemorate Equal Pay Day, created by the National Committee on Pay Equity to symbolize how far into the next year women must work to match the annual earnings of men. The Massachusetts senator declared her support for ensuring that workers are paid equally, regardless of gender, and pointed to a ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as affirmation.

Warren's declaration of support for pair equality, however, did not address her previous history of paying female staffers in her Senate office 71 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts during the 2016 fiscal year, as the Washington Free Beacon previously reported.

The median annual earnings for women staffers, $52,750, was more than $20,000 less than the median annual earnings for men, $73,750, according to the analysis of publicly available Senate data.

When calculated using average salaries rather than median, the pay gap expands to just over $26,051, or about 31 percent.

Among Warren's female staffers who were employed for all of 2016, only one woman earned a six-figure salary. That woman, Warren's director of scheduling, barely broke the six-figure mark, earning $100,624.88 for the entirety of 2016.

Five male staff members, however, received six-figure salaries, with the lowest paid of the five still earning about $13,000 more than the director of scheduling.

After the Free Beacon's report, Warren failed to acknowledge Equal Pay Day for the first time since joining the Senate in 2013. Last year, Warren was the only female Democratic senator who failed to mention the event.

The ruling that Warren referenced in her tweet was issued on Monday to widespread applause from progressive activists. The ruling found that an employer can not use an employee's salary from a previous job as justification for paying them less than another employee for the same work.