White House Only About Half as Sexist as Country

WH says its gender pay gap 'better than the national average'

The White House on Monday looked to deflect criticism over its own pay policies ahead of an event Tuesday on lessening wage discrimination.

White House press secretary Jay Carney was peppered by questions from reporters about an American Enterprise Institute study that found the salary for the median female White House staffer was 12 percent lower than for a male staffer. Carney said that men and women in the same jobs at the White House earn the same salaries.

"We have two deputy chiefs of staff, one man and one woman, and they make the same salary," Carney said. "We have 16 department heads. Over half of them are women, all of whom make the same salary as their male counterparts."

He said, checking his binders full of women.

As Instapundit (where I saw this article) points out "when you're explaining, you're losing".

For the nation as a whole, the gap is about 23%.  But when corrected for job selection, experience, education, and hours worked, the gap falls to about 5% or less.  Simply, in aggregate, women choose a different suite of career paths.  Very few choose to log or fish for crab in the Bering Sea, while few men choose to become day care workers.

Meanwhile, in the death and dismembership gap, the bulk of workplace deaths continue to fall overwhelmingly on men:

I'll worry about the gender pay gap when women volunteer to step up and fill the gender death gap.