White House Says Wage Gender Gap Stats Are Misleading…When Applied to the White House

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney doesn’t
like when you apply the same logic governing wages in private
businesses to his employer’s own payroll. As
President Obama prepares to sign an executive order addressing the
gender gap in federal contractors’ wages, critics have pointed
out that female White House staffers make an average of 88 cents
for every dollar male staffers earn. 

Carney protested that this was misleading, because women and men
holding similar positions at the White House are paid equivalent
salaries. Because women outnumber men at the lowest levels of the
employee chain, however, the average female salary at the White
House is lower. 

Carney is right: It is misleading to average the salaries of men
and women in widely varying positions and then use this as evidence
that women are being discriminated against. That women
disproportionately make up lower-paid positions may point to some
broad, systematic gender bias, past or present, but it doesn’t
equate to outright sexist behavior on an employer’s part. 

It’s good that Carney acknowledges this as far as the White
House is concerned, because the Obama administration and many
others are quick to gloss over nuance like this when talking about
the wage gap in general. We frequently hear that American women
make only 77 cents for every dollar men make, but this is based on
data that fails to account for women’s work histories and life
choices. It aggregates the earnings of women in all positions and
compares this average against the earnings of all men. 

As The Washington Post‘s
Nia-Malika Henderson points out, “It’s hard to find a
study that finds no pay disparity in what men
and women make,”—several studies place it closer to 84 cents on the
dollar. But the gap is neither as wide nor as easily reduced as
many would make it out to be. Though there are surely some
occupations and companies where women get paid less out of plain
old sexism, the wage gap overall seems a product of large but less
nefarious
structural and cultural forces.

These forces are certainly worth talking about. Why do women
still flock to lower paying fields and positions? How can women,
men, and companies make having children less detrimental to women’s
careers? Why does the wage gap widen for older women even when they
don’t have children? Etcetera. But trotting out misleading
statistics about women’s wages not only fails to address these
issues adequately, it actively works against addressing them. It
makes things too simplistic, and thus given to simplistic
solutions.

This week, Senate
Democrats are (again) considering the “Paycheck Fairness Act,”
which would require employers to submit pay information annually
for all employees. How will this help shrink the wage gap? No one’s
been too specific about that. But, hey, what’s a little more
bureaucracy when there’s the spectacle of government action to
uphold?

The bill would also make employers liable to civil actions for
pay discrimination. Republicans in Congress say
this is unnecessary, because gender-based discrimination is
already illegal. But a vote against the bill is a good way to get
painted as complicit in the Republican “war on women,” so you can
see why backing the lackluster legislation is a good political move
for Democrats. Henderson notes in the Post that states
where Democrats are running close races this year seem to contain
Democrats most concerned with addressing the wage gap
immediately.