Last week the White House released its annual report to Congress that disclosed the salaries of its staffers. In doing so, it also revealed a gender pay gap among officials that’s wider than the national average.
A CNN analysis found that women working in the White House are paid 80 cents for every dollar earned by their male colleagues. Across the country, women earn 82 cents for every dollar men take home, according to the Labor Department.
Men in the White House earn nearly $104,000 on average, according to CNN, while women receive an average salary of about $83,000. The discrepancy is due, in large part, to the dearth of women in top positions in President Donald Trump’s administration. Among the 22 employees earning the top salary for a permanent White House employee—$179,000—only six are women.
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First daughter Ivanka Trump has been vocal in advocating for closing the United States’ pay gap. On April 4, recognized as Equal Pay Day, she tweeted: “#EqualPayDay is a reminder that women deserve equal pay for equal work. We must work to close the gender pay gap!” But she was quickly lambasted for the remark, as critics pointed to her father’s earlier decision to revoke the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces executive order that President Barack Obama signed in 2014. The measure required companies under federal contract to abide by paycheck transparency—the disclosure of earnings, pay scales, and salaries—in an effort to eliminate wage discrimination and, in turn, narrow the gender wage gap.
It should be noted that a gender pay gap also plagued the White House during the Obama administration, though the gulf was narrower then. Analysis of last year’s annual report to Congress by the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute found that women working in the White House under Obama earned 89.25 cents for every dollar paid to their male colleagues.
