Edit Added Later: WARNING, THERE IS NO ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE IN USE HERE. I USE NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER TO PROVE OR DISPROVE ANYTHING. Thank you.

(As I wrote this, my wife got a Law-Dee special foot massage...)

I keep hearing how much wage disparity there is between male and female. However, I would like to note a few things that are disengenous about those statistics (And likewise every other statistic.)

My wife and I both had the same education level, both worked the same amount of hours and both did similar work.

My wife had a salary of about 28,800... I made about 42,000. Now, that would be factored into the gender gap and, not surprisingly, Mr. Dawdee would come away far wealthier than Mrs. Deedaw. After all, it's all about those bucks per hour isn't it?

Yet, she got daycare for our two children at her work (At 150 a pop per week for our neighborhood that's 1200 a month or 14,400 a year.) So, she made about 43,200...or I made 27,600 if I had to pay the daycare...

Either way, now my wife is making more because of the "Perks..." Trust me, I wasn't complaining !

Now, add to that the tax deductions she could claim, a company car, and we add about 5K more. But in stats that doesn't matter does it?

Truthfully though, I did have better insurance than her, so that may have evened out the 5K in perks... But again, she only needed to apply herself a bit more and she could have increased her salary by about 13K a year--I could not do that myself in my career.

More women have benefits like daycare at work then men (Of course that's speculation, I admit, because "conveniently" no one has stats for that...) Of course these benefits don't calculate into raw salary. And "conveniently" neither is the part-time versus full-time calculated--which is huge.

I just used my wife and I as an example of how skewered statistics could be. I know there is real wage discrimination and this post in no way disputes or marginalizes it; however, it does make me wonder how inaccurate studies can be. I know women are kept down in jobs so they cannot rise.

I just think the truth lies somewhere in the middle--women are discriminated against, but not as much as we like to make it out to be.

Now, if anyone brings info to the table I would be happy to look it over and, if it proves a point, I will gladly change my perspective. The sites I have been to are so biased as to make my head hurt. Either man bashing or woman bashing. I am tired of that. I think women should be afforded every opportunity as men. But afforded is all...

Of course this is in America! I don't know or speak for women in other countries...