Multiple factors at work in ‘gender wage gap'

Article here. Excerpt:

'As the conservative Independent Women's Forum and others have pointed out, the 80 percent statistic is misleading because it is a raw comparison of all full-time working men and women. “Thus the female receptionist working 40-hour weeks is tossed in with the male orthopedic surgeon putting in 70-hour weeks,” writes the IWF's Arrah Nielsen, who pointed out that men are more likely to take jobs that pose more physical danger – a risk appropriately rewarded in higher pay. The pay gap between men and women in many occupations is much less than 20 percent, and in some vanishes altogether.
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Nielsen notes that women take more time off work to raise children – gaps that do (and should) affect their pay. And the same Department of Labor statistics that “prove” the gap exists also state that women work 3.5 hours fewer per week than men do. Various studies, such as that by June O'Neill, former director of the Congressional Budget office, suggest that when those and other factors are considered, the gap is dramatically reduced or even eliminated.'