Background: In February, the right-wing publication, The Washington Free Beacon, published a report that Clinton, a lifetime advocate of equal pay, did not pay her own staff equally as a U.S. Senator. The Free Beacon reported that Clinton paid her female staff 72 cents for each dollar paid to men. Other right-wing media outlets, such as NewsMax, the Washington Times, and Fox News also published the false attack. This attack is completely untrue.
Clinton paid women and men equally, dollar for dollar, as a U.S. Senator, according to a BuzzFeed review of internal data.
o As a Senator, Clinton paid women and men equally on her three political committees.
o In her Senate office, women and men were paid dollar for dollar.
o The median salary for both men and women on Clinton’s Senate office staff and committee staff, from 2002-2008, was $43,000.
Clinton employed more women than men while she was a Senator.
Hillary Clinton believes that everyone deserves equal pay for equal work, which is why she was a leader in the fight for equal pay in the Senate.
o Hillary Clinton championed the fight for paycheck fairness, introducing the Paycheck Fairness Act in 2005 and 2007 to help prevent and eliminate paycheck discrimination.
o Senator Clinton cosponsored the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which was signed into law in 2009. She also cosponsored the bill as originally introduced in 2007.
Hillary Clinton has always been passionate about advancing the rights of women and has worked to empower women throughout the world.
o She recognizes that no society can achieve its full potential “when half the population is denied the opportunity to achieve theirs.”
o At the State Department, Clinton recognized women’s rights as a major foreign policy issue and named the first Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues.
o As First Lady, Hillary Clinton boldly declared in Beijing that “women’s rights are human rights.”