Sorry Patricia Arquette, Women Are Doing Better Than You Think

Article here. Excerpt:

'I had two emotions when I heard Patricia Arquette’s acceptance speech last week for her well-deserved Oscar for Boyhood. First: good for her to want to spend her speech trying to improve the world by calling for pay equity between genders instead of reveling in her own fame.

Second, however: what a shame that she believes the same old pseudo-facts instead of thinking for a second about what the statistics really mean. Why can’t people learn to be critical about statistics?

One day after the annual observance of International Women’s Day, here’s the real scoop. The average of 77 cents on the dollar that women receive compares the median annual income for full-time, full-year 25-to-69-year-old women and men. That average is much better than it was as recently as 1980 (when women made less than 60 percent). But that’s not a fair measure. If you compare women and men doing the jobs with the same kind of job history and for the same time devoted to their current job, you get numbers closer to 92 cents on the dollar. While that’s not 100 cents, it leaves a very different taste in your mouth than 77.'