Hillary Clinton portrays herself as a champion of women in the workforce, but women working for her in the U.S. Senate were paid 72 cents for each dollar paid to men, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis of her Senate years’ salary data.
During those years, the median annual salary for a woman working in Clinton’s office was $15,708.38 less than the median salary for a man, according to the analysis of data compiled from official Senate expenditure reports.
The analysis compiled the annual salaries paid to staffers for an entire fiscal year of work from the years 2002 to 2008. Salaries of employees who were not part of Clinton’s office for a full fiscal year were not included. Because the Senate fiscal year extends from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30, Clinton’s first year in the Senate, which began on Jan. 3, 2001, was also not included in the analysis.
The salaries speak for themselves. The data shows that women in her office were paid 72 cents for every dollar paid to men.
Despite the numbers, Clinton and her allies have long-touted her as "a fighter for equal pay."
Correct the Record, a pro-Clinton organization that fights negative reporting on her, pointed out that as a senator she chaired hearings on the issue and sponsored legislation to address it.
Clinton herself has raised the issue, saying last year that there is still "more work to do," and that 20 years ago women made just "72 cents on the dollar to men"–a figure identical to the gender pay gap in her own Senate office.
20 years ago, women made 72 cents on the dollar to men. Today it's still just 77 cents. More work to do. #EqualPay #NoCeilings
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) April 9, 2014
In the coming months, Clinton will continue to go all in on the issue. She has a paid speaking engagement on Tuesday at the Lead On Silicon Valley Conference for Women, which aims to increase the representation of women at executive levels in California’s tech industry.
A week later, she will speak at the 30th anniversary gala for EMILY’s List, a political group that supports female Democratic candidates and regularly attacks candidates for "opposing equal pay for women." EMILY’s List states that Hillary has "dedicated her life to bettering the lives of women" and that it has "been proud to support her since her election to the United States Senate in 2000."
EMILY’s List did not respond to a request for comment on the findings of the analysis.
When Clinton’s staff salaries were separated by year, 2005 showed that women earned a slightly higher median salary than men.
In other years the results were far worse—in 2006, women earned 65 cents for each dollar men earned, and in 2008 it was 63 cents to women for each dollar to men.
By comparison to a cross-section of all workers in the District of Columbia, women earned 90 cents for each dollar earned by men, a significantly smaller pay gap than in Clinton’s office.
Mark Perry, an economic scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has written extensively on the White House hypocrisy related to gender pay equality, said that the data on Clinton shows that she is guilty of the same hypocrisy.
"Politicians like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama can’t have it both ways," Perry said. "They use raw, aggregate, unadjusted gender differences in pay and then claim that those pay gaps are the result of gender discrimination, like the 23 percent national gender pay gap in aggregate median income."
"They would then have to admit that they themselves are guilty of gender discrimination and have their own glass ceilings to explain, because they have gender pay gaps that are much greater than the average gender pay gap in Washington, D.C."
Perry said Clinton needs to either put an end to her rhetoric on the issue or admit that she too is guilty of gender discrimination.
"Either Clinton is guilty of gender discrimination and pays her female staffers significantly less than men, or she is guilty of statistical fraud for spreading misinformation about the alleged gender pay gap at the national level," he said.
Signs indicate there will also be large gender pay gap on Clinton’s 2016 campaign staff. The Washington Post reported last week that Clinton will rely on "President Obama’s heavily male campaign apparatus" to run her upcoming presidential campaign.
A request for comment made to the Clinton Foundation was not returned.