Hannah Hoffman

Statesman Journal

Dennis Richardson, Republican candidate for governor, has yet to create a specific plan to eliminate the pay gap between men and women in the governor's office, in spite of having made it a central campaign issue during the past week.

His spokeswoman, Meredith Glacken, said Friday that it is a "goal" Richardson hopes to accomplish during his first four-year term.

He will work with his transition team to create a plan if he's elected, she said, but at the moment can't point to any specifics.

She and I chatted about the issue this week because some of my reporting inspired a movement within his campaign.

Richardson has put out an online ad and endorsed a series of protests around the state targeting Gov. John Kitzhaber for employing a staff where women are paid, on average, 79 percent of what men are paid.

The statistic he is relying on came from one of my previous columns and was included among many other facts about the pay gap in state government. It's based entirely on an average of women's salaries against an average of men's, and a few people are left out because the spreadsheet I used had them listed in other departments.

(Some of his policy advisors are actually paid by other agencies.)

All of this was included in my original reporting.

The ads suggest Kitzhaber doesn't pay women the same as men for equal work, but the truth of the matter is more complicated. Kitzhaber's office exhibits the exact phenomenon as the rest of state government: Women are overrepresented at the bottom of the pay scale and drag down the average salary for all women. The gap narrows the more specifically one looks at an individual position or job type.

There's nothing "wrong" in what Richardson is saying about Kitzhaber's office. That pay gap exists. However, closing it is much more complicated than it might sound. It can't be attributed to simply paying women less for the same work because the data doesn't actually support that as the reason for the gap at all.

MORE: A deeper look at women's pay | 6 facts about the gender pay gap in Oregon government

Take Ellen Rosenblum's Department of Justice, for example.

On its surface, it's remarkably inequitable. Women make about two-thirds what men do on average, overall.

However, if one looks narrowly, the gap vanishes. Women are the majority of managers, the majority of attorneys, and they make within 10 percent of what men do as paralegals or as attorneys, about 92 cents on the dollar, give or take, depending on the position.

How could both facts be true? Because so many paralegals and child support specialists are women. In fact, nearly all of them are. They outweigh the highly paid women who are attorneys (or the attorney general) in the overall average.

Kitzhaber's office is pretty similar: Policy advisors are paid close to the same, and so are administrative support staff. However, those lower paid support staff are overwhelmingly women, and the average is worse overall than for individual positions.

At first, Glacken told me Richardson planned to simply hire more men as support staff and more women as policy advisors.

There are a couple of issues with that.

First, there's no guarantee men will apply for those jobs and no guarantee the ones who do will be as qualified as the women. I'm sure they exist, but I've never met a man who made a career out of being an executive assistant. I have, however, met many brilliant women who have. They'd be hard to beat if you needed an executive assistant for the governor.

Second, the support staff doesn't usually change over entirely with a new administration. These are the people who keep the office running, not the people who keep partisan politics running. For all we know, Kitzhaber may well have a Republican woman keeping his schedule. If these staff members don't want to quit just because the administration changes, should Richardson replace some of them anyway to increase equity?

Glacken's response to these questions was simple.

"With an unemployment rate that's been above the national average for about as long as Kitzhaber's been Governor, I don't think it will be a challenge for Dennis to find some qualified entry level males to fill entry level positions," she said.

It sounds like Richardson isn't planning to fire any support staff but will be more conscious about gender as he fills vacated positions.

Given that every state agency seems to have the same problem, evenly split hiring may not be the total solution, in spite of how simple it sounds.

As for a policy plan, Glacken didn't present one. Instead, she offered this statement:

"As for a plan, Dennis isn't just all talk on this issue. It's something he's already shown leadership with on his campaign staff. A positive model for pay equality is something that he's passionate about implementing in the Governors office, and he's made it to goal to make that a reality by the end of his first term," she said.

"He will be working with his transition team to discuss the details of how to make that happen, and set an example that employers across the state can look to."

In the meantime, the State of Oregon and Kitzhaber are both working to figure it out too. It seems no one has a definitive answer for how to solve this problem.

hhoffman@statesmanjournal.com, (503) 399-6719 or follow at twitter.com/HannahKHoffman