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More than a year into her tenure as the first female White House press secretary, Dee Dee Myers was miffed when she learned that a man in another office, whose title was equal to her own, was making $10,000 more than her.
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The maximum salary for each of them was $110,000. He was getting the max, she was getting $100,000 even.
In her new book, “Why Women Should Rule the World,” she writes that she “had more responsibility than he did; by any possible measure, I outranked him.”
She also points out that she had a lower rank, smaller office and lesser salary than her male predecessors.
So she marched in to see Chief of Staff Leon Panetta and made her case — to no avail.
“He was a partner in a law firm,” she says Panetta told her, regarding her colleague. “He took a huge pay cut to come here.”
When she pressed him, he replied that he didn’t have the budget for it.
And when she kept arguing, he told her: “Look, we have to pay people based on previous experience and salary history. Plus, he’s got a family. It’s not going to happen.”
At the end of the day, she decided, “I thought my only real option was to let it go, to just accept the injustice and get back to work.”
