What is the extent of truth to the wage gap between men and women in America?

This is a good resource.

Not talking about a man and woman doing the same, identical job with the same, identical skills and experience.

Here is how Pew Research measures it, and how the government measures it.

This is another interesting article.

Lastly, we just recently passed gender pay day, April 14th, which represents how far into the next year a woman has to work to equal what a man made in the previous calendar year.

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/08/gender_pay_gap_the_familiar_line_that_women_make_77_cents_to_every_man_s.html

you can turn the statistics and wording to belch out just about any number here. I have a hard time accepting this when it does come down to biology, preference and choice. There is certainly no gender bias in higher learning so why don’t we see females earning degrees with high earning and employment potential? A good example was a meeting I was in today, out of say 35 senior managers and engineers there were a whopping four women. One of them was the highest ranking and pulls a seven figure salary. One was a recent engineering grad and the other two were administrative types that went into management. My company has zero problem and even dare I say gives preferential treatment to employing and promoting qualified women. Where are they then if it’s not based on choices they make?
We act like this wage gap is a problem but does it not reflect the fact that women have a choice in how they want to live now? Salaries company wide are known and it certainly does not show any wage gap except that women in technical fields did seem to make a little more and I attribute that to A: The ones that dare go into a male dominated field are really fucking good at what they do and B: My company actively recruits them. Our management is really female heavy so it’s not surprising. Even with the few we have over the years I have seen a good quarter of them leave high paying professional careers to be stay at home mothers for their children. More power too them, choice is a good thing. The gender wage gap is not completely erased but the 77 cents per dollar figure is outright bullshit.

Women overall make around 77 cents for every a dollar makes. Asian women make 90 cents on the dollar, white women make 78 cents on the dollar, black women make 64 cents on the dollar, Native American women make 59 cents on the dollar, and Hispanic women make 54 cents on the dollar. These are all statistical facts that can be easily confirmed. That women make less than men is not a subject of debate. The debate is over why the difference exists and what, if anything, should be done about it.

The newest meme from the right is the whole “women’s choices create the difference.” Now, there can be no doubt that women’s choices contribute to the difference, but notice that even if “women’s choices” completely answers the “why?” part of the debate, it says absolutely nothing about the “what, if anything, should be done about it?” part of the debate. Women earn less because they choose to have children? Men make the choice to have children, too. But as a group, they’re still making more than women. So men and women face different consequences for making the same choice. Whoops! Looks like there’s still an explanatory gap!

“Hey, it’s more than the choice. It’s the biological fact that women have the babies and often need to take time off because of it.” Okay, but the gap exists even when women receive paid maternity leave (which should be universal, but sadly isn’t). So it can’t just be the time off that’s making the difference. It’s the fact that choosing to have a child often forces women to put their careers on hold. And again, it’s not just the time off. We know this because men who take paternity leave (which should also be universal) don’t take a comparable hit to their career advancement. Women who have children, especially women who take maternity leave, are viewed as less serious about their career than men who make the exact same choice.

And then there’s the question of why women make the choices they do. Specifically, why do women often end up in professions that pay less, and why are women the ones who are typically making sacrifices when somebody needs to stay home to take care of the kids or an elderly relative. If women are being pushed out of high paying professions (not necessarily on purpose, but possibly due to environmental factors), then it may not be a lack of ambition that keeps women making less. And of course, there is a general social assumption that women are the caregivers. So it’s just assumed that they will stay home when “someone” has to. Part of the pay gap may be the result of men refusing to step up and do some of the unpaid emotional labor that keeps the world going. So it’s not that women are working less, it’s that not all labor is paid and women tend to do a larger proportion of the unpaid labor (because it’s not the kind of labor that gets done as part of an employment contract).

Maybe none of that will change anyone’s mind, but the utter ignorance displayed by people who just shout “women’s choices!” as if there is no more nuance to it is pretty astounding.

Since President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act in 1963, it has been illegal in the United States to pay men and women working in the same place different salaries for similar work.

Of course a business or a boss can choose to break the law. But if they do and it it found out then they can be sued.