Hillary Clinton paid female staff 72 cents for each dollar paid to men when she was a senator

Though former secretary of state and presumed 2016 candidate Hillary Clinton is known for her vocal support of women's equality, during her time in the Senate she perhaps wasn't so consistent on this issue. Analysis done by the Washington Free Beacon of the salaries Clinton paid her female and male Senate staffers revealed that male staffers were paid, on average, about $15,000 more than females.

The difference works out to about 72 cents paid to women for each dollar paid to male staff, which is even more marked a disparity than the widely cited figure of 77 cents on the dollar.

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However, as many have noted in analyzing the larger wage gap issue, it's perfectly possible that Clinton's salaries were fair: Women do make less than men when we look at sheer averages, but when we control for gendered differences in job selection — women tend to work more part-time jobs, leave the workforce for child rearing more often, and favor jobs with higher flexibility but lower pay — the wage gap shrinks significantly, to as little as 4.5 or 6.6 percent.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.