It is not just a gap in wages, it s a gap in our nation s principles and promises. I have rarely heard the wage gap presented in a more artful and inflammatory way. Mrs. Clinton is saying that women are being cheated out of 25 percent of their wages. Most economists who have studied the gap will tell you that it has little to do with discrimination. Wage differences between males and female are mainly the effect of characteristically different priorities that men and women express in their work and home lives.
Women devote more time to children than men do.
They are far more likely than men to drop out of the workplace, or cut down on work once they have a family. This results in lower earnings. Moreover, women and men follow different career paths. College women, for example, are far more likely to pursue degrees in fields like psychology and journalism than in more lucrative fields such as engineering and computer science. But the First Lady is not talking about sporadic injustices.