Who, him, sexist? Idaho Gov. Butch Otter with
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, in front of Ronald Reagan.
Pro tip: If you're a woman who'd like to be paid roughly the same as men at your level, don't go to work for Idaho Gov. Butch Otter (R).
Dan Popkey of the Idaho Statesman reports that Otter's 44-person Cabinet has 33 men and 11 women, with the men earning a median salary of $103,002 and the women earning a median of $85,446. The highest-paid woman on the Cabinet is Agriculture Director Celia Gould, who has been in Otter's administration since he became governor. Fifteen men earn more than she does, including Commerce Director Jeffrey Sayer, who has been on the job for less than six months and oversees about one-fifth as many employees as Gould. Not only that, Gould's predecessor earned more than Sayer's:
When Otter hired Gould, he set her pay at $90,002, $626 or 0.7 percent more than her male predecessor, Pat Takasugi. Sayer is paid 66 percent more than his predecessor, Don Dietrich, who made $87,568.
That pretty much demolishes a theory floated by Republican state Sen. Joyce Broadsword, that "I suspect it is not always that it is a female director who is paid less, but an agency which is not as important."
One female member of Otter's Cabinet, Parks and Recreation Director Nancy Merrill,
[...] said she hadn’t noticed the gender gap and believes Otter is “pleased with the performance of his women” Cabinet members. “He certainly has supported me.”
Merrill added that when she was hired in 2009, she “had to accept hiring of a deputy director for the same pay as I was getting.”
Riiight. The fact that her male deputy earns as much as she does didn't tip her off to the existence of a gender gap. Quite likely, she'd have some justification for why these specific circumstances made that appropriate and not an indicator of, y'know, sexism. Just as the second-lowest paid person on the Cabinet, a woman, natch, would be paid more if she hadn't turned down so many of the raises the governor tried to give her. And maybe she has! But when you're talking about a 44-member Cabinet that is 75 percent male and the 25 percent of women are earning just 83 percent of what the men are earning, individual explanations don't cut it. Unless it's that Idaho Gov. Butch Otter is, individually, a sexist.