The Work Of Politics
Politics is in the air and everywhere we turn, we are hit with the latest results from a primary or analysis of the Presidential candidates.
While we normally shy away from politics and support all women in the workplace regardless of political affiliation, we decided there is an angle on the Presidential elections that’s about gender equality at work. Running a Presidential campaign is a lot of work and that work is done by both men and women. If you work — or aspire to work — in politics you might be interested in an analysis released this week by Jezebel reporter Joanna Rothkopf showing the salaries of campaign staffers for the various U.S. Presidential hopefuls.
Analyzing Federal Election Commission payroll data from the last few months of 2015, Rothkopf found that the candidates had quite different average gender pay statistics. For example, Hillary Clinton’s campaign was the only Presidential campaign to hire more women than men, overall. The biggest average pay gap between men and women existed on Ted Cruz’s campaign staff, and the top 10 highest paid staffers on Bernie Sanders’ campaign were all men. Three of Donald Trump’s highest paid staffers are women, if you were wondering where he stacked up.
To add to Rothkopf’s findings, earlier this week we wrote about the Buy Up Index’s analysis of the Democratic contenders for the Presidential election. Their analysis reveals that women of color comprised almost 1/3 of Clinton’s staff compared to 0% for Sanders’.
Just how much does politics affects a woman’s workplace success, pay and promotion? This week, the Washington Post reported that one analysis of the nation’s top 200 law firms between 2007-2012 showed that women were much less likely to be promoted to partner if their male bosses donated to the Republican party. According to the study by professors at the University of Michigan and Temple University, women may face a “gender gap in promotions” that is twice as large when a manager is politically conservative versus liberal.
This caused us at Fairygodboss to wonder: does the converse hold? In other words, how does your own workplace experience impact or relate to your political beliefs? Are you more likely to vote for Hillary if you have been sexually harassed at work or been mentored by a woman, for example? Or are you just as likely to vote for Donald Trump? We’re interested in hearing from you! It's completely anonymous and will only take 3 minutes. Click here!
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