Abby Lane, Fellow

For the last decade, the wage gap for women has barely budged – the typical women who works full time, year round still only makes 77 cents for every dollar paid to her male counterpart. As highlighted by a recent Bloomberg Businessweek article, there is a gender wage gap in virtually all jobs. Out of 265 major occupations, women’s median salary only exceeded men’s in one – personal care workers. The wage gap also occurs at all education levels, after experience is taken into account, and it gets worse as women’s careers progress. All told, even when accounting for a number of factors that can be expected to impact wages, it still exists. In fact, recent research shows that more than 40 percent of the wage gap is still unexplained, even after considering educational background, occupation, industry, work experience, union status, and race.

Despite this evidence of persistent unfair pay, recent weeks have also seen two oddly optimistic articles about women’s earnings. Let’s see what they’re so excited about:

First, Anya Kamenetz tries to reconcile why women’s earnings haven’t increased while their levels of education have. She concludes that women’s earnings are falling behind because (1) they have kids, (2) they chose jobs that don’t pay well, and (3) they are not “bold” or assertive. The onus in her explanation falls for the most part on women themselves – though she notes the structural element of some of these pieces, her answer is largely about planning correctly and making different choices. Who knew it was so easy – women can just make different choices and they’ll be paid fairly! This answer ignores the fact that even women who aren’t mothers see a wage gap. It ignores the fact that “women’s” jobs pay less precisely because women chose them – because women’s work is devalued – and, as noted above, that women are paid less even when they do chose the same profession as men. It ignores the fact that women often get punished for being bold or assertive. And the idea that these women might face discrimination? Not even mentioned.

It’s the first month of jobs data for 2012 and January is off to a good start, according to NWLC’s number crunching this morning. The newly released jobs data for January brought some good news – drops in unemployment and job gains for both women and men this month.

Here are a few things you should know from today’s jobs data:

• Women’s and men’s unemployment is the same for the first time since the start of the recession. When the recession officially began in December 2007, the unemployment rate for both women and men stood at 4.4 percent. Over two and a half years later, their unemployment rates finally meet again – at 7.7 percent. Since the start of the recovery in June 2009, men’s unemployment has dropped 2.2 percentage points, while women’s unemployment has essentially remained flat – rising slightly from 7.6 percent in June 2009.