Meghan Markle has often appeared at pains to demonstrate her feminist credentials, to use her platform to advance the cause for women’s rights. And who could blame her? Equality among the sexes is a worthwhile pursuit, especially for someone with the capacity to really effectuate change.
But it appears Meghan’s commitment to feminism may be grounded more in style than in substance; despite the polished delivery of slogans such as “feminism is about fairness”, the Duchess of Sussex’s hyper-progressive organisation Archewell doesn’t appear to have adopted that message.
Following astonishing revelations that the company lost £11 million in donations since 2021, a recently published tax return reveals that despite Meghan’s long history of feminist grandstanding, her company’s got a significant gender pay gap among its highest-paid employees.
The chasm between Meghan’s worthy words and her company’s not-so-worthy wage structure has not gone unnoticed, with legions of social media followers lining up to point out her rampant hypocrisy.
The newly released tax return shows that Archewell’s executive director and president James Holt received a salary of £181,582 ($227,405) in 2022, with senior strategic advisor Michael Stein earning a cool £111,882 ($140,116) and co-executive director Shauna Nep taking home £74,232 ($92,994).
It doesn’t take an expert in industrial relations to see that the only woman in a top position at the company earns less than half what the highest-paid male at Archewell earns, despite having a near identical job title. Plus she earns nearly $50,000 less than the next highest-paid man, whose role appears to be subordinate to hers.
Social media has been ablaze since learning of the payscale, pointing out at the high-earning exec director has significantly less experience than the decidedly less well-paid female exec director. One said: “So, let me get this right… Meghan Markle goes on and on about equal pay YET James Holt (Co-Director) with 16+ experience earns $227k a year vs Shauna Nep (Co-Director) with 24+ experience only earns $93k a year? Interesting Archewell business”.
Another added: “So no equal pay in Archwell, huh!! The torchbearer of feminism failing to support women in her own organization”.
A third chimed in, incredulous at the naked double standard: “How is this possible? Don’t they are both Executive directors? They hold the same position in the company.”
A fourth said: “Justice for Shauna Nep! No bonus and much less pay. Which feminist allows that?”. While a fifth angry X user added: “Oh look, #ArchewellFoundation pays their (white) male staffers more. #Misogyny”.
Besides the descrepancy between employees, Express.co.uk has reported that Mr Holt’s new salary is a 280 percent increase on what he was on.
Although the Duke and Duchess of Sussex don’t take home a wage from their work for Archewell, they only clock in for an hour a week, according to the tax return.
