Democrats, thankfully, avoid gender wage gap myth

During Tuesday night's debate, Democrats mentioned only twice the disparity between men and women's earnings and avoided the tired old claim that women are paid just 78 cents to the dollar that men are paid. The implication of that statistic, of course, is that discrimination is at play.

Despite the party consistently parroting that line, the statistic is highly misleading. The 78-cents figure comes from comparing the median earnings of all women to the median earnings of all men. While gender gap warriors like to imply that discrimination is the factor, the comparison is hardly an apples-to-apples comparison of men and women working side-by-side at the exact same job with the exact same experience, education and hours.

In her opening statement last night, frontrunner Hillary Clinton mentioned that she believes in "equal pay for equal work for women," and that was the closest anyone came to suggesting discrimination. Again, the wage gap isn't the result of unequal pay for equal work. It is the result of unequal pay for unequal work, that is, men and women working different jobs with different levels of experience, education and hours worked.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders was the only other candidate on the stage to even allude to the issue, including "pay equity for women workers" in a list of solutions to the broader issue of income inequality.

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