That statistic is very misleading (women earn 77cents for every dollar a man earns)...they look at profession only, not the specific job and duties. Men often take the jobs in the same profession that have more travel, evenings, weekends, leadership and management roles and they are more competitive with asking for raises and additional duties to make more $. That makes up a very large % of the difference. I hate these government statistics that are too general and liberals go nuts with this statistic without delving into the details.