Thread: IVANKA TRUMP DEFENDS DAD, SAYS DONALD TRUMP ‘100 PERCENT BELIEVES IN EQUALITY OF GEND

- DECEMBER 30, 2015 -

IVANKA TRUMP DEFENDS DAD, SAYS DONALD TRUMP ‘100 PERCENT BELIEVES IN EQUALITY OF GENDER’

FOX News

Ivanka Trump isn’t afraid to show off her baby bump — or her political ambitions.

“It’s not something I’ve ever been inclined to do, but I’m 34, so who knows?” The Donald’s daughter tells February’s Town & Country magazine of launching a political bid of her own. “At this point, I would never even contemplate it, but that doesn’t mean that when I’m 50 I won’t have a change of heart.”

The businesswoman, who is pregnant with her third child, tells the magazine that despite what critics say, her dad is “one of the great advocates for women.”

“He 100 percent believes in equality of gender,” she says. “He has been a great example to me my whole life [and has] confidence in women to do any job that a man can do, and my whole life has been proof of that.

“If he didn’t feel that women were as competent as men, I would be relegated to some role subordinate to my brothers,” adds Ivanka, who is an executive vice president at the Trump Organization.

Describing how she balances work with motherhood, she says it is all about compromise.

“I abhor this question of ‘having it all,’ ” says Ivanka, who is married to real-estate scion Jared Kushner.

“I don’t do everything. I wouldn’t be able to do what I do professionally if I did. I don’t go to the afternoon classes. I don’t take my son to the sports play group in the middle of the day.”

“For some people, that’s a compromise they aren't willing to make, and I respect that.”

http://www.donaldjtrump.com/media/iv...es-in-equality

Hillary Clinton Demands Equal Pay But Doesn’t Put Her Money Where Her Mouth Is

BY SEAMUS KELLEHER



Hillary Clinton has long positioned herself as a champion of equal pay for women. Ironically, new reports show that the former Secretary of State is, herself, part of the problem.

During her time in the U.S. Senate, Clinton paid women in her office 72 cents for each dollar paid to men, according to a report by WashingtonFree Beacon.

Analyzing data obtained from official Senate expenditure reports, Free Beacon concluded that the median annual salary for female staffers was $15,708.38 less than the median salary for men, between 2002 to 2008.

That’s about a 28 percent gender wage gap:

Image Source: Washington Free Beacon

As Clinton ramps up her efforts for a likely presidential run in 2016, party leaders expect wage equality to be a major part of her platform. But this latest information might complicate things.

To be fair, some of this gap might have more to do with job selection and hours worked. As The Week notes:

“Women tend to work more part-time jobs, leave the workforce for child rearing more often, and favor jobs with higher flexibility but lower pay.”

Still, Clinton will have to explain the disparity in compensation between men and women on her own staff — especially since she has made her public stance so clear:

Hillary Clinton
✔@HillaryClinton

20 years ago, women made 72 cents on the dollar to men. Today it's still just 77 cents. More work to do. #EqualPay #NoCeilings
7:20 PM - 8 Apr 2014


Clinton may suggest women being paid 72 cents on the dollar to men only happened 20 years ago in America–but it didn’t. It happened in her own Senate office, within the past seven years.

http://www.ijreview.com/2015/02/2572...cent-less-men/

Piece from the Washington Post, so the backhanded snark is built in but it gets the point across.
Donald Trump, a champion of women? His female employees think so.



In this outtake photo from Savvy Woman magazine cover story in 1989, Donald Trump poses with members of his team, Blanche Sprague, left, Susan Heilbron, center, and Barbara Res. (George Lange)

By Frances Stead Sellers November 24

After she joined Donald Trump’s real estate business, Louise Sunshine struggled to maintain a steady weight while managing her new career alongside the busy schedules of three young children.

Trump must have noticed, Sun*shine said. She recalled that he kept an unflattering photograph of her in a drawer — a “fat picture,” as she called it — that he would pull out when she did something he didn’t like.

It was “a reminder that I wasn’t perfect,” said Sunshine, who worked with Trump for 15 years starting in the mid-1970s when he set about remaking Manhattan’s skyline. “He just is that way.”

Sunshine said she bears no grudges and instead considers Trump a valued mentor. A political fundraiser with no prior real estate expertise, Sunshine ascended to executive vice president of the Trump Organization, joining a cadre of female executives who have played central roles in Trump’s empire.

Trump called Sunshine’s account of the photograph “totally false and ridiculous,” but her feelings illustrate a paradox about the Republican front-runner.

Louise Sunshine with Donald Trump, left, and President Jimmy Carter. Sunshine worked for Donald Trump for 15 years starting in the 1970s and rose to become a senior vice president. (Photo Courtesy of Louise Sunshine)

In the five months that the billionaire businessman has spent on the presidential campaign trail, his inflammatory missiles toward women have prompted charges of sexism, even misogyny. His obsession with physical appearance — such as speculating that Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton was wearing a wig — drew charges of bullying from the candidate vying to be the country’s first female president. Polls show Trump suffering from a wider gender gap among American voters overall than other Republican candidates.

But many women who have worked closely with Trump say he was a corporate executive ahead of his time in providing career advancement for women. While some say he could be boorish, his companies nurtured and pro*moted women in an otherwise male-dominated industry. Several women said they appreciated how Trump granted them entry to a new playing field.

“From the standpoint of being a woman, I just thought he was phenomenal,” said Sunshine, 74. “So supportive and encouraging. . . . He gave me the ropes, and I could either hang myself or prove myself.”

Jennifer Crisafulli-Oberting, 43, a contestant on the Trump reality TV show “The Apprentice” who went on to promote the show in media appearances with Trump, said she felt she was being welcomed into the “boys’ club” — but on her terms.
“You were like one of the guys right off the bat, but you didn’t have to act or dress like one of the guys,” she said.

Trump often told the women he employed and worked with that he valued those he believed would stand their ground on construction sites and in legal battles. He called Barbara Res, whom he put in charge of the construction of his now-iconic Trump Tower in 1980, “a killer,” she recalled. And he used to tell her and others that “men are better than women, but a good woman is better than 10 good men.”

“He wasn’t discriminatory against women that I saw,” said Res, now in her 60s and owner of a construction consultancy.

Donald Trump dedicated a “Trump the Game” set to Louise Sunshine, a real estate developer who worked for the billionarie businessman. (Angel Valentin/For The Washington Post)

Res said Trump was “brave” to hire her when few women were in the business. But like many men of the era, she said, “he was sexist; he made comments and stuff like that.”

In an interview, Trump blamed perceptions of him as sexist on unfair media coverage of his presidential campaign.
“I have been very, very good for women,” he said. “I was way ahead of the curve.”

Trump highlighted the role of women in his corporate success in his 1987 book “The Art of the Deal,” writing that he hired “a lot of women for top jobs, and they’re among my best people.”

Referring in the interview to his recruitment and promotion of women, he added: “It was a good decision. Good for women and good for me.”

Today, according to Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, there are more women than men holding executive positions in the Trump Organization, heading such departments as human resources, golf and hotel management, and global licensing, even though women make up just 43 percent of the overall workforce. Women who are in similar positions as men, Cohen said, “are compensated at equal and in many cases higher pay rates.”

It was not possible to independently verify Cohen’s data, and he declined to provide documentation.

The picture many current and former employees paint stands in contrast to the blustering controversies prompted by Trump’s comments since he hit the campaign trail. In an interview after the first Republican debate, when Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly grilled Trump about calling women “fat pigs,” “dogs,” “slobs” and “disgusting animals,” Trump said Kelly had “blood coming out of her wherever.” He mocked the appearance of his only female rival for the nomination, Carly Fiorina, referring in a Rolling Stone interview to her face and asking, “Would anyone vote for that?” His attempt to make amends by saying of Fiorina, “I think she’s got a beautiful face,” struck many as demeaning.

Asked in an interview about his comments about Kelly and Fiorina, Trump said: “They can take care of themselves. They are capable of taking care of themselves.” He also insisted that he does not discriminate. “I treat men and women in a very similar fashion,” he said.

Trump has not reserved his critiques of appearances to women. He said recently that his hair was better than that of rival Marco Rubio. And he achieved a back-handed jab at Rand Paul during a recent debate by saying, “I never attacked him on his look, and believe me, there’s plenty of subject matter right there.”

At times, it seems Trump can’t help himself. Midway through a telephone interview about his treatment of women, he told a Washington Post reporter, “You’re a very beautiful woman, as I understand it.”

The presence of striking women has played a key role in Trump’s relentless quest to boost his brand — in real estate, in entertainment and now in politics.

In 1989, Savvy Woman magazine ran a cover story featuring Trump with Res and two other women on his team with the text “Surprise! Mr. Macho’s Inner Circle Isn’t An All-Boys’ Club.” The cover at once burnished the image of an alpha male and suggested the modern sensibilities of a gender-neutral employer.

After “The Apprentice” debuted in 2004, Trump’s many *media appearances with shapely beauties helped goose the show’s phenomenal ratings. Crisafulli-Oberting remembered participating in a shoot for People’s 2004 Sexiest Man Alive issue in which she and five other women appeared in a barbershop scene combing Trump’s hair and shining his shoes. A quote from Trump, then 58, reads, “These are special women, so if they think I’m sexy, that’s OK with me.”

Now, in his political life, Trump relies on a former model, 27-year-old Hope Hicks, to run hisPR.

His glamorous daughter Ivanka — about whom he once said, “If Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her” — introduced Trump when he announced his presidential bid. Ivanka, 34 and pregnant with her third child, navigates a thoroughly modern path between motherhood, real estate development and promoting her line of jewelry and clothing. She is developing a Lean In-style “Women Who Work” initiative and in recent weeks has taken to the airwaves to combat the furor her father’s comments provoked.

“I don’t think that he’s gender-targeted at all,” Ivanka Trump told CNN. “I wouldn’t be a high-level executive within his organization if he felt that way.”

Those who have worked for Trump say looks aren’t everything. He is more interested in hiring smart people, regardless of gender, they say, and that has led Trump for decades to rely on strong, assertive women both as gatekeepers and as advisers.

Norma Foerderer, for instance, spent two decades as a personal assistant to Trump, advising him on everything “from what color tie to wear to whether or not he should purchase a building,” according to Jim Dowd, who used to represent Trump at his <acronym title="Google Page Ranking"><acronym title="Google Page Ranking">PR</acronym></acronym> company. Foerderer, who rose to vice president, retired in 2006 and died two years ago.

Rhona Graff, Trump’s current assistant and a senior vice president, has been with him for more than 25 years. Graff, who regularly appeared in “The Apprentice,” gained some notice recently after a super PAC backing Trump used contact information that came from her to solicit a donation, according to an e-mail obtained by The Post. Graff declined to be interviewed for this article, but she sent an e-mail in which she described a stimulating position in which two days were never alike working for a man who is at once demanding and “brilliant, insightful, funny, charismatic and surprisingly down to earth.”

Several of Trump’s female employees said he fostered a positive work environment.

Deirdre Rosen, 42, vice president of human resources for the Trump Hotel Collection, said that after working for big public companies, the seven years she has spent at the family-run Trump Organization have offered her the flexibility to “be present at soccer games and drama club” with her children.

Jill Martin, 35, assistant general counsel, who joined the Trump Organization five years ago, described a boss who helped her overcome her caution about her abilities and encouraged her to grow. When a case went before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, she said, Trump could have asked a more experienced male lawyer to argue the case. Instead, “He said, ‘Jill, you’ll do great,’ ” she recalled. “He pushed me when I needed it.”

But several women who are longtime Trump supporters say the provocative outbursts that served Trump well in business and entertainment don’t belong in politics. “I don’t like the fact the worlds are merging,” said Ereka Vetrini, a TV host and lifestyle expert.

Vetrini, who appeared with other female “Apprentice” contestants in a controversial TV Guide cover (“tummies bare, ties on”), said she understood the impetus to boost ratings for Trump’s show, but political polls are a different matter.
“Fiorina and Kelly?” she said. “I can’t disregard those comments.”

Nor can Res, who also disagrees with her former boss’s political stance: From his antiabortion position to his opposition to the Affordable Care Act, “his policies, the things he says he believes in, are very anti-women.”

“I’m voting for Hillary,” Res said.

Despite what she says is outrageous language, Sunshine said she supports Trump in his bid to be president.
And the “fat picture”?

She hasn’t forgotten it, Sunshine said. “When I gain weight, I think of that picture,” she reflected, evoking a Pavlovian image of her former boss using the photograph as a trigger to condition her behavior.

Looking back, she said, “it was quite a good idea.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...0ec_story.html

Donald Trump is such a wonderful person. You know, I read an article the other day on Allen West's website, that said Trump employs 20,000 people. That's amazing for a private company run by 1 person. I knew he employed a lot, but I was staggered by that number. The DuPont Co. for example only employs 54,000 as a comparison.