The gender wage inequality gap for women is real and cannot be explained away by the choices women make in careers. That's according to the Economic Policy Institute's Jessica Scheider.

[Jessica Scheider]: "No matter what industry or occupation a woman goes into chances are overwhelmingly that she's gonna be paid less than men in the same occupation.

It's not just a case that overwhelmingly women are much more likely to work in female dominated occupations and men are more likely to work in male dominated occupations. But even when women reach over and wind up in chemical engineering or finance, they are still going to make less on average than the men in those same fields."

Scheider says even the progress that has been made in shrinking the wage gap between men and women isn't really great news for workers.

[Jessica Scheider]: "When you look at the history of the wage gap, it;s actually really interesting because about thirty percent of the closing of the wage gap that we've seen since 1979 is actually due to men's wages falling in absolute terms.

You see this kind of convergence but you would ideally not see the convergence because men's wages are falling. You would ideally see wages of both men and women increasing. And unfortunately that's not what we see."