When Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump accused his presumptive Democrat opponent, Hillary Clinton, of playing the 'woman's card' in the race to the White House, it backfired.
Clinton was the first to respond, unleashing many other retorts from both women and men – and an extra $2.4 million in campaign fundraising.
"If fighting for women's health care and paid family leave and equal pay is playing the woman card, then deal me in!" Clinton shot back.
One of our favorite commentaries came from Kirsty Styles, writing on thenextweb.com: Styles writes about a deck of cards in production now by a creative sister and brother team which is celebrating famous women, such as Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, Mary Cassatt and Beyonce. Clinton is the ace in this deck, which is due on the market in July.
While enamored of the idea, in her column Styles points out that the Woman Card deck doesn’t reference any female tech innovators who've made America great.
[See also: HIMSS compensation survey: Big salary gap between men, women healthcare pros.]
Styles suggests three to get the creators of the card deck fired up for tech: Pioneering computer programmer Grace Hopper, Radia ‘don’t call me the Mother of the Internet’ Perlman and women in tech champion Anita Borg.
Hmm, maybe someone should create a Women in Health IT card deck.
Or maybe it’s enough with the cards already.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof writes in his April 30 column, "Trump Plays the Man's Card," that Trump is missing point.
"This is the card that in the United States earns women just 92 cents to a male worker’s dollar, less than one-fifth of the seats in Congress, a bare 19 percent of corporate board seats, an assault every nine seconds — and free catcalls and condescension! Frankly, I’ll stick with my MasterCard," Kristof writes.
That 92 percent earnings figure stands in contrast with the findings published in a HIMSS compensation survey released this past January.
The HIMSS survey reveals that men, on average, earned $126,262, compared to $100,762 for women in the survey of 1,900 healthcare professionals that includes CEOs, CIOs, IT project managers, sales professionals and those with clinical titles such as CMIO and Clinical Systems Analyst. It means that women in health IT make about 80 percent of what men earn in the same positions.
Twitter: @Bernie_HITN
Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com
