Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
A newly released photo of President Barack Obama and his top aides reveals that little has changed in a White House that insists upon waging a “war on women” even while under-employing – and underpaying – its female staffers.
The Washington Free Beacon is reporting that the White House’s Flickr account just released a photo of the president with this top aides and there’s not a single woman in the room.
“The complete absence of women in the image is another reminder that females are underrepresented in Obama’s staff,” the Beacon writes.
The article goes on to remind that in 2011, female staffers in the White House earned a median annual salary of $60,000, which was about 18 percent less than the median income for male employees of $71,000.
Even after the media exposed this situation, the Obama administration did little to correct it. The president’s re-election campaign did only slightly better, paying female employees an average of $6,872 during that period compared to an average of $7,235 for men. This works out to a difference of $363 or 5.3 percent.
These incriminating numbers are in addition to former staffers who complained about being left out of meetings and treated unfairly by the president’s advisors.
For instance, former White House Communications Director Anita Dunn is quoted by journalist Ron Suskind in the book Confidence Men: Wall Steet, Washington and the Education of a President as calling the White House a hostile environment.
“This place would be in court for a hostile workplace because it actually fit all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women,” Dunn said.
Christina Romer, former head of the Council of Economic Advisers, said of one meeting with Larry Summers, former chairman of the National Economic Council that she “felt like a piece of meat.”
In spite of these allegations, the president and his allies continue to press a bogus war on women, using it to pressure the public into acceptance of so-called “reproductive services” for women that amount to nothing less than unfettered access to birth control and abortion. Thus far, the tactic has worked and Obama’s hypocrisy has remained unchallenged.
At this point, it remains unclear “when Obama and the Democrats will call off the war on women.”
Probably not until the public either wakes up to the truth or the trumped-up war on women is no longer politically profitable.
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