In the United States:

The “Wage Gap”

During the 2008 election, Obama made a remark in a campaign ad that is now used often in the modern day women’s rights movement and has been used as a tool to capture women’s votes in the democratic party ever since. He noted that women were paid “77 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men.” While this is a valid statistic, it leads people to believe something that is not entirely true. This statistic includes all women and all men in the country, employed or unemployed. Due to traditional gender roles, it is inherent that many women will stay home with their families and children more often than men will. This alone puts female income as a whole at a disadvantage statistically in comparison to men. In addition, there are fields where women dominate and men are less likely to get hired and less likely to be found working in such as receptionists, nurses, and elementary and middle school teachers. This is not a result of discrimination as men are also more likely to work a job such as an electrician, a construction worker, or a truck driver. Often these occupations pay more than women dominated occupations and while down on paper this may look like a societal prejudice that women are making less than men, this is more due to gender and personal preference than to flaw in our government or society. Gary Burtless, an economist with the Brookings Institution made said “If more men tend to be employed in occupations that pay higher wages both to men and women, then men may enjoy an overall earnings advantage even if all women in each occupation receive exactly the same hourly pay as the men who are employed in the occupation." When looking at the income of men and women working in the same fields, the wage gap is much smaller than if you are looking at it as a whole such as the statistic presented by President Obama. Stating that women are making 77 cents to every dollar a man makes for doing “the same work” is implausible.