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4 Female Photographers Accuse Detroit Free Press of Gender-Based Pay Bias

October 14, 2017, 4:00 PM

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Newspapers often write about alleged injustice, and squirm when they're the targets of such an allegation.

But here it is: Four former and current female photographers on Friday filed a federal lawsuit against the Detroit Free Press and its parent company, Gannett, for pay discrimination, Sarah Rahal of The Detroit News reports. The 20-page federal suit Filed Friday says they were paid less for years because they were woman.

Mary Schroeder, Rose Ann McKean, Kathleen Galligan and Regina Boone request unspecified damages under the federal Equal Pay Act of 1963.

The News reports: 

The lawsuit stemmed from a 2017 study published by the newspaper's union that analyzed data for male and female employees at the Free Press called "Sex and Wage Report." According to that study, which looked at pay data from 2013 to 2015, for almost every [newsroom] category of job at the Free Press, "the male median wage was higher than the female median wage," according to the suit.

The lawsuit also claims male photographers made $4.04 more per hour than female photographers, according to the suit.

The lawsuit alleges the following:

  • Male assistant editors make $7.62 an hour more than their female counterparts who are equally qualified.
  • Women photographers are also paid less than their male colleagues by more than $4 an hour.
  • The longer women stay, the greater the disparity in pay. Men who have been at the Free Press for 20 years or more make almost $10 an hour more than women with similar seniority.


Read more:  The Detroit News


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