text: Not quite the same, but MUCH closer than the meaningless '72%' figure that gets bandied about by those more interested in pushing an agenda than in being honest.
  
  In reality women working full-time earn an average hourly wage of about 90% of what men working full-time earn (women working part-time earn more then men working part-time, but that is mainly because a higher proportion of the "men" working part-time are 15-24 year old students).
  
  The reason for this comes down to a LOT of factors including different types of jobs where one gender makes up a large share of the workforce than another and different levels of experience caused by women taking more time off to raise children and there being comparatively older women near the peak of their career earnings, usually somewhere around 50 to 55 years of age so they would have had to start working in the 1980's.
  
  The gap exists, but it is often BADLY exaggerated.  It is also unclear what, if anything, the government CAN do about it.