White House still has a 16 percent wage gap

Per the calculations of economist Mark Perry at the American Enterprise Institute, the Obama White House maintains a 15.8 percent wage gap, with women earning 84.2 cents for every dollar male staffers take home. Perry used the White House's self-reported salary data to tabulate this gap, which marks a slight decrease compared to last year's 17.9 percent. Still, it translates to an average of $12,350 less for female employees each year.

Perry argues that the disparity can be explained either by alleging the president participates in the wage discrimination he has so often decried — or by admitting that other factors, like "age, years of continuous work experience, education, differences in positions, hours worked, marital status, number of children, workplace environment and safety, industry differences, etc." may tend to give women lower average salaries than men.

A number of recent surveys have found that many women value flexible schedules and work-life balance more than high salaries, and women are also more likely to take significant time off work or even turn down promotions for child-rearing activities. Women gravitate toward low-paying college majors as well, while men dominate the more remunerative hard sciences.

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