Despite women’s rapid gains in the working world, gender preference advocates and the media often portray working women as victims of rampant discrimination. This discrimination, such advocates argue, results in a wage gap and renders women powerless in the face of an impenetrable glass ceiling. While discrimination does exist in the workplace, levels of education attainment, field of education, and time spent in the workforce play a far greater role in determining women’s pay and promotion.

Today, the average American woman earns about 74 cents for every dollar the average man earns. Women comprise about 11 percent of corporate officers in the Fortune 500 companies. While such statistics are routinely used as evidence of gender discrimination, they ignore the many variables that affect position and earnings. More important, these claims serve to devalue women’s choices—such as family, volunteer work, and selfemployment — when they are not geared towards the corporate boardroom.

The reality is that when considering men and women with similar fields of study, educational attainment, and continuous time spent in the workforce, the wage gap disappears. This is true for some women in high-paying “male” fields such as engineering, chemistry, and computer science.

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