Salary tracking website PayScale released a report Thursday pushing back on the idea of a gender pay gap.
The report found that although women earn an average 81 cents on the dollar to when compared to men, it’s because women choose lower paying jobs.
“Unequal pay for equal work? Not really,” wrote Katie Bardaro, lead economist at PayScale.
The site found that the salary difference between men and women with the same types of jobs was negligible. The reason for the wage gap is that females tend to gravitate toward jobs that are societally beneficial, where as men choose more lucrative careers, according to the report.
The biggest discrepancy in salary by gender is at the executive level, where there is a nine percent difference, compared with a two percent difference overall.
“Instead of focusing the debate on the misbegotten gender wage gap, we should instead examine why women are absent from high-paying jobs and industries, like technology, engineering and executive positions,” Bardaro wrote.
PayScale used data from 13,500 survey responses to draw their conclusions.