Long Beach Assemblymember Bonnie Lowenthal, in her role as the chair of the Legislative Women’s Caucus, is taking a new (but not-so-new) approach to addressing pay inequity and other gender inequalities: talking about it.
Lowenthal hosted her first Women’s Voices lecture with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who is largely credited with making the social media giant profitable. Sandberg has been forthright in her belief that women need to be assertive more than aggressive or passive—a sentiment that Lowenthal shares.
“Assertion training has been a part of my life for a long time as a teacher and therapist,” Lowenthal said, noting the widely popular Manuel Smith book When I Say No, I Feel Guilty as an influence. “When you’re passive, you put your own needs beneath those of others. When you’re aggressive, you put your own needs above those of others. And when you’re assertive, you put your needs on the same level.”
In this sense, many women have been caught in between a role of either modeling or image making: be passive or be aggressive, be told what you’re supposed to be or be told what you should be to get ahead. And Lowenthal is attempting to show that neither is healthy for success for anyone—particularly women and particularly women in the Capitol.
The sad reality is that we are not entirely beyond the commonly referenced glass ceiling. One only has to look at the pay of the highest-paid employees at Lowenthal’s workplace, the lower house of the California State Legislature.
The following persons—all of which are men—are the ten highest paid employees of the California State Assembly, each noted with their title and per-month salary:
Christopher Woods, Chief Consultant: $16,123
Greg Campbell, Speaker’s Chief of Staff: $15,834
Jon Waldie, Chief Administrative Officer: $15,100
Gus Demas, Fiscal Officer: $14,895
Richard Simpson, Chief Consultant: $14,734
Arnold Sowell, Chief Consultant: $14,734
Christian Griffith: $14,676
Geoffrey Long, Chief Consultant: $14,634
Edward “Dotson” Wilson, Chief Clerk: $14,414
James Deboo, Director of Majority Consultants: $13,750
The highest-paid woman—the Speaker’s legal counsel, Fredericka McGee—makes $13,727 per month, which equates to abut 85 cents to every dollar of the highest paid man.
According to Lowenthal, though the legislature began staff increases among the Assembly after a three-year long freeze, they ultimately failed on pay equity—hence her speaker series that she hopes will engage everyone within the legislature to notice that gender inequality still exisits on many levels.
“It could very well be that since women only represent 25% of the legislature, men simply want to work with other men,” Lowenthal said. “Our speaker’s chief of staff was female—he has always been strong advocate of women. I am doing everything I can to elevate the interest of women, the involvement of women, and the investment in women in the capital. That’s why I am having these conversations: it’s not just the Assembly—it’s a phenomenon across the board, in every industry. We’ve made progress but we’ve still a long way to go.”
This inequity was first noted here.
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