A recent NY Times article pretty much gives the game away as far as the wage gap goes:

Workers are dropping out of the labor force in droves, and they are mostly women. In fact, many are young women. But they are not dropping out forever; instead, these young women seem to be postponing their working lives to get more education. There are now — for the first time in three decades — more young women in school than in the work force.

“I was working part-time at Starbucks for a year and a half,” said Laura Baker, 24, who started a master’s program in strategic communications this fall at the University of Denver. “I wasn’t willing to just stay there. I had to do something.”

[...]

Women still earn significantly less than men. And in the two and a half years since the recovery officially began, men age 16 to 24 have gained 178,000 jobs, while their female counterparts have lost 255,000 positions, according to the Labor Department.

Apparently discouraged by scant openings, 412,000 young women have dropped out of the labor force entirely in the last two and a half years, meaning they are not looking for work.

From the above passages, it would appear that women have it harder, but the following shows what’s really going on:

Some studies suggest that women are pickier about their job choices than men. Already earning lower pay, women are less willing to work when wages fall further, especially if they are able to rely on an employed (and these days, often newly re-employed) husband. Women are also more reluctant to work night or weekend shifts, according to government data on how Americans spend their time, partly because they have more family responsibilities.

“The jobs out there just aren’t very good, and men seem more willing to take them for whatever reason,” said Jonathan L. Willis, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. “The women are looking at those same jobs and saying, ‘I’ll be more productive elsewhere.’”

It appears that young women aren’t as thrilled about work as young men. The suggestion is that these women have more “family responsibilities,” but if that’s the case, why are they going to school?

Both men and women are going back to school, but the growth in enrollment is significantly larger for women (who dominated college campuses even before the financial crisis). In the last two years, the number of women ages 18 to 24 in school rose by 130,000, compared with a gain of 53,000 for young men.

As the young woman profiled above demonstrates, family responsibility rarely has anything to do with it. Women with young children are less likely to be in school than working part time to cover expenses; usually they have little choice. The women who are dropping out of the labor force and going back to school are mainly those without children, i.e. they have options, and they just don’t like the jobs that are available.

Any wage gap that exists, as has already been proven, is a direct result of choices women make. Because men and women are not the same, women have different priorities, and comfort is often higher on a woman’s list than a man’s. School is more comfortable than starting work at Starbucks at 5AM, so many women will choose school instead of an uncomfortable job.

It’s an understandable choice, but is it a good idea?

Those attending more expensive private schools, like Ms. Baker, will have an even tougher time guaranteeing that their educational investment pays off. Including the loans that financed her undergraduate education at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, she will complete her master’s program next year owing about $200,000 in debt.

“I have to have faith that I will eventually get a good job that pays enough to pay my living expenses and pay back my loans,” she said, “and hopefully make me happy in the process.”

She’ll owe 200,000 at age 25, and expects to find a job that will make her “happy”…

Supposedly, women will have an overwhelming advantage over men in coming years as education “pays off.” Somehow, I think a lot of young women are going to be sorely disappointed in a decade’s time (or less). It’s easy to point and laugh at girls who are putting themselves in debt bondage for a dubious degree, but let’s be honest here: they’ve been swindled, and that’s a pretty nasty thing to do to the young and naïve.