Which presidential campaigns have largest pay disparities?

[ESF]

Very interesting. Unfortunately, they didn't do a similar study into people of color on campaign staffs - I'm sure the results would be even more shameful.  But some of these campaigns (ahem, Sanders) have a lot to answer for.

 I'm just posting the intro - click through for the summaries of all candidates.

An Investigation: Which Presidential Campaigns Have the Largest Gender Wage Disparities?

theslot.jezebel.com/an-investigation-which-presidential-campaigns-have-the-1762895557

A Jezebel analysis of campaign finance data has found that of the six active presidential campaigns, four have significant gender wage disparities. Most notably, Ted Cruz’s campaign on average pays male staffers $20,000 more than female staffers, and of the ten highest paid staffers on Bernie Sanders’ campaign, not a single one is a woman.

At the end of January, Elizabeth May Davidson, a 26-year-old Iowa field organizer for Donald Trump, filed a discrimination complaint against the campaign for a workplace that was hostile to women: she alleged the campaign regularly paid men more than women for the same jobs, allowed men to take on a more significant role in producing rallies, and that the first time she met Trump, he made a comment about her appearance.

Unless an employee files an official workplace complaint like Davidson did, these campaigns are largely opaque, closed shops. The one thing we do have access to, however, is information about pay.

We looked at year-end finance reports for each campaign to attempt to gauge how close each staff was to gender parity: Do presidential campaigns employ a comparable number of women to men? Do they pay female employees equitably? Are an equal number of women given leadership roles and salaries to match?

The Federal Election Commission year-end reports only cover fourth quarter expenditures (October to December 2015), and do so in an imperfect way. First of all, the data exclude staffers paid as campaign consultants (these consultants could advise on policy or strategy, or work as pollsters or media advisors). The data also likely have some errors—in the reports we examined, a single employee’s name might be spelled differently in multiple payroll entries. Finally, there isn’t an easy way to tell who is a full-time employee versus who is an intern or a contractor who received pay for a limited project.

To control for the final variable, we included in our analysis only employees who had received at least four paychecks, and who made a minimum projected annual salary of $24,000 (which we determined by extrapolating assumed biweekly payments). This proved more limiting for Democratic candidates who included hundreds of employees on their reports, as opposed to the Republicans who generally had no more than 50 unique employees (Richard Skinner, an analyst at the Sunlight Foundation, explained this could be because Democratic campaigns often have more extensive field operations, while Republicans tend to unofficially delegate certain responsibilities to PACs). We also made our best efforts to determine how each employee identified gender-wise, which we understand is an imperfect, limiting undertaking.

Takeaways

Although Bernie Sanders’ campaign pays women on average a little under $1,000 more than men, the top ten highest-paid employees are all male.

The highest discrepancy we saw is in the Ted Cruz campaign, where male employees make an average of $20,000 more than female employees.

Marco Rubio’s campaign wins points for the campaign that pays women the best. Women on Rubio’s staff make, on average, just over $5,000 more than men, and of the 10 highest-paid staffers, six are female.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is also fairly equitable, with male and female staffers making essentially the same amount of money.

Every campaign (excluding Clinton’s, which employs 324 women and 202 men) employs significantly more men than women.

The highest paid staffer is Cruz’s political director Mark Campbell, at $192,000. It is impossible to determine which staffer is paid lowest, because of our minimum salary cut off ($24,000).

Sixteen people on Clinton’s campaign make over $100,000. That number drops precipitously for the other campaigns: Four people on Kasich’s campaign, and three on Sanders and Cruz’s campaigns respectively, make that much. Only one Rubio staffer makes over $100,000. No one on Trump’s team earns in the six figures.

[juliej]

pandce.proboards.com/thread/519371/campaign-gender-wage-disparities

Nobody replied to me, though.

[froggy76]

I read it when it was posted yesterday. It's just not enough data to draw any conclusions or be meaningful.

[aurora]

Mar 16, 2016 15:13:45 GMT -5 juliej said:

pandce.proboards.com/thread/519371/campaign-gender-wage-disparities

Nobody replied to me, though.

Oh, man; I missed it and you even included charts!

I think we can safely blame the fact that most of us were transfixed by pending election results.

[maddiepaddy]

Mar 16, 2016 16:20:03 GMT -5 froggy76 said:

I read it when it was posted yesterday. It's just not enough data to draw any conclusions or be meaningful.

I'm not sure I agree. I think it is pretty meaningful that there is not a single woman in Bernie's top leadership...

As for the actual gender pay disparities, I suppose I could agree that there's not a ton of data to look at - but it is what it is as far as size of the campaign staff, etc... So, I don't think we can really just decide that the relative small amount of data means that we shouldn't take a close look at what's going on. 

I too, ESF would love to see data on both how POC staffers' pay stacks up as well as how diverse each staff really is. 

[katietornado]

Mar 16, 2016 15:00:07 GMT -5 ESF said:

At the end of January, Elizabeth May Davidson, a 26-year-old Iowa field organizer for Donald Trump, filed a discrimination complaint against the campaign for a workplace that was hostile to women: she alleged the campaign regularly paid men more than women for the same jobs, allowed men to take on a more significant role in producing rallies, and that the first time she met Trump, he made a comment about her appearance.

I hope it goes without saying that I excuse his actions in no way.  But I have got to wonder just what exactly this woman expected, given his public comments.

[isabel]

I gotta say, for all his talk, this irks me: "of the ten highest paid staffers on Bernie Sanders’ campaign, not a single one is a woman."

[juliej]

Mar 16, 2016 16:55:37 GMT -5 isabel said:

I gotta say, for all his talk, this irks me: "of the ten highest paid staffers on Bernie Sanders’ campaign, not a single one is a woman."

To respond to this point, the Berner supporters in the comments of the article bring up, "But he pays his interns!" Holy false equivalence, Batman! 

[ttt]

It doesn't make it right, but seriously, what was the woman working for Trump expecting? I mean, were you really surprised? Did you know who you signed up to work for?

[elleblue]

Mar 16, 2016 16:55:37 GMT -5 isabel said:

I gotta say, for all his talk, this irks me: "of the ten highest paid staffers on Bernie Sanders’ campaign, not a single one is a woman."

Considering their minimal response to the rhetoric spewed by rabid Bernie Bro types, this surprises me not at all. 

[gpw]

I was hoping we'd see HRC paying males .77 to every female 1.00.