“I am delighted today to approve the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which prohibits arbitrary discrimination against women in the payment of wages.” This is what President John F. Kennedy said when he signed the Fair Pay Act of 1963. This was women had left to fight for before there was true equality. This problem is we believe that it is because of discrimination that we have the wage gap. To me this isn’t true, and if people can learn what the true story about the wage gap is, we can find a solution. The 77 cent figure, where women only get paid about 77% of what a man earns in one year, is one that is talked about most so I will elaborate on if this statistic can be trusted, or if it looks at the wrong things for the wage gap. Secondly, what about occupational differences and hourly differences those surly affect that pay gap well I’m going to talk about that also. Thirdly is this pay gap actually discrimination or is it a different type of discrimination or is it even discrimination at all well I try to answer that question also. Lastly, I want to show people that it isn’t bad here by showing what the pay gap is in different countries. By doing this we can find the real problem and find a way to have our solution faster. The 77 cent statistic is used a lot
 

I believe that people who support that the wage gap is based all on discrimination is false, or their main statistic that they use which is the 77 cent figure. Which states that women make 77 cents to every dollar that a man makes. The real question is, is this entirely accurate. According to the center for American Progress on May 19, 2014 the 77 cent statistic is like all statistics tell a particular story. It’s calculated by dividing the median of full-time, all year, woman working by the median of full-time, all year, working men, all rounded to the nearest $100. Depending on which source someone may use the gender pay gap looks different. According to The Washington Post on April 9, 2014 the Fact Checker called out President Obama multiple times when he used the 77 cent figure. Also few experts dispute that there is a wage gap, yet differences in life choices can affect the calculations. Women usually leave the workforce when they have a child so that they can take care of them. Once the child gets older they slowly enter the workforce again. They choose jobs that don’t pay as much, but allow for them to choose their hours and days that they work so that they can spend time with family. This makes it difficult to make comparisons between men and women.  The gender wage gap has many things that can affect the percentage of the difference.

The gender pay gap has many things that can explain the difference. This only affects a portion of it and it has to do with occupational differences. According to The Center for American Progress on May 19, 2014 in an article called Explaining the Gender Wage Gap by Sarah Jane Gylnn says that occupational differences is of the largest driving factors for the gender pay gap. Occupational differences account for up to 49.3% of the wage gap. Women are also more likely to be more clustered in jobs than men, with nearly half of all working women 44.4% employed in just 20 occupations. Some of these occupations include secretaries, administrative assistants, registered nurses, and school teachers. Meanwhile, only one-third 34.8% of men are employed in the top 20 occupations for male workers, including truck drivers, managers, and supervisors. So while the 77 cent figure compares working men and women in different jobs, it is influenced by occupational segregation and the different wages men and women earn in the same type of job. Another thing that may affect this is differences in hours. Women not only work in different professions, or they work fewer hours in the workplace. 35 minutes per day compared to men. Among full time working men and women. What accounts for the time difference?

Interestingly, when home and child work is taken into account, the time difference looks very different. Most employed women with a child 6 or younger spend about 47 minutes taking care of them. The data suggests that women’s reduction in work hours can be accounted when taking into consideration the fact that women spend more unpaid time off of work to take care of children or family members. There are a lot of myths put in place to help people get wrong information about the wage gap.

  According to Freakonomics Radio on January 6, 2016 Claudia Goldin says there may be pay discrimination in some places, but it isn’t the “Smoking Gun” ,Smoking Gun means what is the reason for it,. She says that it is hard to find a “Smoking Gun” for the gender pay gap. Also Claudia Goldin says that there were smoking guns in the past but in recent years there haven't been smoking guns. She also said that in 1939 there were smoking guns such as “I do not hire negros.” and “I do not hire women.” we do not find those smoking guns now.  She says “What we do is we do is hold everything to a constant that we can hold, and what remains we don’t call discrimination. We call it “wage discrimination”, because discrimination is such a loaded word. Goldin also said in the podcast when asked about the different appetite for competition. Said that she doesn’t have a doubt that can affect the pay difference between men and women. This is what is going on in the U.S. but it is worse in other countries.

Most countries have a small pay gap like the U.S. Canada has the lowest pay gap between men and women.  According to Forbes on Jan. 11, 2017 in an article called The Countries With The Best And The Worst Gender Pay Gap Expectations And How The US Stacks Up by Jeff Kauflin after a survey taken in the 4 countries with the highest difference. Jeff Kauflin found that in Saudi Arabia male business students were expected to make around $35 thousand dollars after graduation. On the other hand female business students were expected to make around $27 thousand dollars. These were in the countries with the highest gap in pay between men and women. Also, in another study done by Forbes in the same article they found that female business students were expected to be making more than men after graduating. Morocco has one of the smallest gap in pay between men and women. Where female business students are expected to make about $1 thousand dollars more than men after college. Forbes says the gender pay gap in the U.S. is about 80 cents on the dollar, but Saudi Arabia has a gender pay gap is about 75 cents to the dollar.  The gender wage gap is a problem but it isn’t the businesses fault, it's ours because we don’t know what the wage gap is truly. We also have to see that we are not the only country with a wage gap, there are countries like Saudi Arabia that have a massive wage gap.
So in the end there is still a possibility that there is a gender pay gap that is completely because of discrimination, but the majority of them have different driving factors. President John F Kennedy wanted to bring wages into the right light, but it has only sent it farther into the darkness. No one can blame anyone because it is so hard to find the causes, but if we can learn what to do, and how to fix it we can stay the.So if people can see what the wage gap truly is, and see what we can do to fix it to allow equal pay to both men and women . To fix the gender wage gap it may take awhile to find a true solution and it may never happen, but if we can find out what the wage gap is without having false claims to what it is. For if everybody is paid equally there is no room for competition to work at a certain area.