Paycheck Fairness Act

[dramaturge]

That report was disingenuous with regards to the White House. When you actually go look at the interactive chart and sort the staff members by job title, everyone of a certain job title makes the same regardless of whether they are a man or woman. The report noted that average salary of women is lower, but that has to do with the spread of jobs across the spectrum. A few more men in higher paying jobs than women immediately skews the average salary data. Men and women in the same job make the same salary at the White House, though.

As I understand it, studies that discuss women making lower salaries are discussing women's salaries in relation to men in the same job. For example, a male CPA making more than a women CPA when everything else is equal.

I'm a fan of the Act from everything I know about it. While I appreciate that some may feel there is less incentive to do a better job when pay is assigned by job title/responsibility/qualifications (ie a set salary increase for both men and women for attaining a further degree would fit under qualifications), there seems to be some fairly significant evidence that pay as an incentive is a far more complex issue than just "work better, I'll pay you more." Performance incentives can come in a variety of forms that work better than just more money. At any rate, I think it's very important at this point to eliminate the pay disparity that exists solely because of sex and work out dealing with incentives in a separate way.

This is an intriguing video discussing incentive: