While U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton proudly declares her ‘feminist’ credentials, the latest cache of emails published by Wikileaks reveals that both the Clinton Foundation and her Senate office paid women staffers just 72 cents for every dollar paid to male employees.
In the hacked emails, Clinton campaign staffer Karuna Seshasai wrote to Democratic operative Ian Mandel, saying, “3 out of the 11 highest paid employees of the Foundation are women. Avg salary of the highest paid men is US $294,157.50, while the avg salary of the highest paid women is $181,576.66 ($112K difference). Median salary of the highest paid men is $346,106, while the median salary of the highest paid women is $185,386 ($190K difference),” she wrote.
Mandel forwarded her email to campaign manager Robby Mook and campaign research director Tony Carrk, adding, “Given the story yesterday about pay equity at the State Department, I wanted to flag something that came out of our research on pay equity at the Foundation. There are huge discrepancies, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they went here next.”
The story Mandel was referring to, reported that even as senator, Clinton paid women 72 cents for every dollar she paid men.
Another batch of emails published by Wikileaks found that in 2011 the Clinton Foundation paid men an average of $8,000 more a year than women.
The 72 cents on the dollar that the Clinton Foundation pays its women staff is even lower than the average for nonprofits in the country, 75 cents.
While the gender wage gap is listed as Clinton’s first priority under the “Women’s rights and opportunity” section on her campaign website, Clinton has proven again her neoliberal bonafides.
In another recent spate of Wikileaks exposures, most notably of her paid speeches to behemoth financial institutions and corporate audiences, her amicable support of Wall Street, a vision of unfettered international trade, and praise for a budget-balancing plan that would have required cuts to the popular Social Security program, have also been revealed.