That 77 cents on the dollar statistic is just a comparison of the average earnings of all full time women with the average earnings of all full time men.  There are so many confounding factors that you can&#x27;t say anything meaningful about wage discrimination with that data.<p>The idea that this statistic must be 1:1 is actually pretty horrifying. We all make tradeoffs throughout our lives between our careers, families, friends, hobbies, and indulgences.  These are deeply personal choices.  Whether by socialization or by birth, men and women are not identical.  It&#x27;s only natural that their aggregate preferences are different.  What&#x27;s important is that each person is free to make this decision for themselves.  There&#x27;s plenty of couples where the woman earns more.<p>Men are much more likely to study engineering or math, while women are much more likely to study psychology, education, or social work.  Women are much more likely to choose to slow down or pause their careers when they have children.  Men are much more likely to put long hours into their work.  Any attempt to measure gender pay discrimination has to control for these things.<p>And then it starts to get really tricky when it comes to individually negotiated salaries. Men are on average better at negotiating their pay. And because job offers are often based on your current pay + some increase to lure you away, the effect gets compounded. This isn&#x27;t discrimination, but it disadvantages women <i>on average</i>. Is the answer to ban pay negotiations? That&#x27;s not realistic, it&#x27;d just depress pay across the board. The solution is to encourage women to negotiate their pay.<p>As for your claim that women are being prevented from getting high-paying work, I&#x27;m not sure what you mean. Could you elaborate?<p>Some sources for your enlightenment:<p>Consad study for the Department of Labor: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.consad.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;reports&#x2F;Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.consad.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;reports&#x2F;Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20...</a> (seems to be down at the moment, but I&#x27;ve been able to access it before)<p>Excerpt: &gt; <i>Although additional research in this area is clearly needed, this study leads to the unambiguous conclusion that the differences in the compensation of men and women are the result of a multitude of factors and that the raw wage gap should not be used as the basis to justify corrective action. Indeed, there may be nothing to correct. The differences in raw wages may be almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers.</i><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.huffingtonpost.com&#x2F;christina-hoff-sommers&#x2F;wage-gap_b_2073804.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.huffingtonpost.com&#x2F;christina-hoff-sommers&#x2F;wage-ga...</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsj.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;the-wage-gap-myth-that-wont-die-1443654408" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsj.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;the-wage-gap-myth-that-wont-die-...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;fact-checker&#x2F;wp&#x2F;2014&#x2F;04&#x2F;09&#x2F;president-obamas-persistent-77-cent-claim-on-the-wage-gap-gets-a-new-pinocchio-rating&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;fact-checker&#x2F;wp&#x2F;2014&#x2F;04&#x2F;...</a>