Things Heard: e33v3

3 Comments

1. Dan Trabue says:

   September 17, 2008 at 11:19 am

   alas he doesn’t practice what he preaches as he there is a sizeable discrepency between female and male staffers in his campaign

   You have any source for this? I googled around looking for it and could only find Rightwing-ish “news” sources for it. Are we talking about what he pays staffers on equal levels or are we talking what he pays a female intern vs what he pays a male executive officer?

   I would question this and would suggest we ought not spread disinformation if we don’t have a legitimate source for the claim.

2. Mark O. says:

   September 17, 2008 at 1:42 pm

   Dan,
   I’d have linked it from my RSS feed, but I didn’t “mark it”. However, 20 seconds with google turned up this.

   But as CNSNews.com observes, Obama’s female Senate staffers earn far less than his male staffers. The average pay for the 33 men on Obama’s staff was $59,207, while the average pay for the 31 women was $48,729.91.” That’s an average difference of at least $6,000 a year. Contrast this with John McCain’s staff. McCain, an Arizona Republican, “employed a total of 69 people during the reporting period ending in the fall of 2007, but 23 of them were interns. Of his non-intern employees, 30 were women and 16 were men. After excluding interns, the average pay for the 30 women on McCain’s staff was $59,104.51. The 16 non-intern males in McCain’s office, by comparison, were paid an average of $56,628.83.”

3. Dan Trabue says:

   September 17, 2008 at 2:17 pm

   I found that source, but I am not familiar with CNSNews and it looked fishy to me (“Right news, Right now” – is that an indicator of their lean?). What is THEIR source?

   And my question remains: are we talking about equal jobs? Are the 33 men on Obama’s staff chief operators mostly while the 31 women are gophers?

   I’m certainly fine with asking the questions, but the “evidence” here is not yet enough to justify accusations of sexism.

   I am guessing that not every job in a campaign office is an equal level job. A newly graduated from college speech writer might be paid $50,000 while an experienced one might be paid $75,000, while the copy editor might be paid $40,000.

   The details would matter.