Fox Business' John Stossel attempted to revive the myth that the gender pay gap is a result of personal choice.
During an August 6 appearance on The O'Reilly Factor, Stossel responded to a statement by co-host Laura Ingraham about liberal criticism of the gender pay gap. Stossel said:
You normal women make different choices, and that's why women are paid less. When it's the same job, they're paid about the same.
Meanwhile, Laura Ingraham dismissed those concerned with equal pay as “feminists and all the Lilly Ledbetter supporters.”
In reality, personal choice is not responsible for the gender wage gap.
In its 2013 Gender Pay Gap Report, the American Association of University Women (AAUW) found that women were paid 82 percent of what men were paid just one year out of college, and that lifetime gender wage disparities cannot be explained by personal choice.
Moreover, according to an April 2012 fact sheet from the Institute for Women's Policy Research, “Women's median earnings are lower than men's in nearly all occupations, whether they work in occupations predominantly done by women, occupations predominantly done by men, or occupations with a more even mix of men and women.”
Right-wing media have repeatedly hyped the personal choice myth despite evidence to the contrary.