"Women make 79 cents for every male dollar" is often the phrase repeated by people from the left trying to figure a way towards pay equality. Now what this phrase may imply is that if a man and a woman do the exact same job for the exact same hours, the man will in fact be paid more. This sounds like a horrific thing, for such a progressive country like the US to have happen. Surely there must be a law in place for this to stop happening.

1963 actually gave the United States that law. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 made it so that no matter what, no one would be paid less based on their sex, gender, race, ethnicity or any other factors that may come into play when it comes to determining pay. If this had become a law, where does this 77 cents for every dollar figure come in? Are women being paid less for doing the exact same job? The answers to these questions isn’t as simple as yes and no, and the answer to this pay gap isn’t as simple as sexism in the workplace.

The average male earned around 50,033dollars per year, where the average women would earn 39,157 per year. This at its core seems to imply some sort of sexism in the workplace, but in fact, this is exactly where the 77 cents for every dollar figure come into play. Take the average earnings of men and the average earnings for women and do simple division, and your answer will be somewhere around 77 and 79 cents, depending on who you ask. Now what this does not take into account are the different choices men and women decide to make. These choices include having children, taking time off and part time workers vs full-time workers. Men who work full time on average work more hours than women who work full time by over an hour long.

When comparing the number of men and women in full-time occupations, men are at an 87% rate of working full time, and women are at only a 75% rate of working full time.

Another component for the gender pay gap is the fear women may have when requesting a pay raise. When they are requesting for a pay raise, they are often seen as demanding and aggressive, so they will work as hard as possible and hope to get a pay rise rather than ask for the raise. Men are also far more likely to ask for a raise, by a wide margin in fact. Even though men ask for a raise more frequently than women, women are given a raise when they ask at a higher percentage than men. That fear they may have, shouldn’t be there, as over 80% of women who ask for a raise, did get one.

These factors that aren’t taken into consideration when calculating the actual wage gap shows a level of irresponsibility on people from the Democratic Party and from feminists in America. They will also cite that the pay gap goes to absurdly low levels for people of minority backgrounds such as African Americans and Hispanics. While they’ll say the pay gap for these races are in between 50 and 67 cents respectively, they somehow seem to forget the mention Asian American men. That might be because Asian American males out earn everyone in America as they earn 8 cents more for every male dollar. Mentioning that would raise a few questions as to the legitimacy of the gender wage gap. Yet, this brings me to a big question as to why? Simple. Asian Americans are more likely to enter what are known as STEM Field jobs than any other race or ethnicity. This may be a key reason as to why women aren’t earning as much as men, women aren’t in as many STEM field jobs as men, despite graduating at a higher rate than men.

When all of these factors are taken into consideration, the gender pay gap seems to narrow to the point of almost not existing. It becomes closer to 93 and 95 cents, which is still a pretty big issue, but not enough to the democrats to tell the truth. If we want to solve the gender pay gap, we should at least be honest as to what that gap truly is.