The Washington Post highlighted new research demonstrating that pay disparities between men and women “start earlier in their careers than frequently assumed and have significantly widened” among college graduates in the past year. The research debunks a claim frequently promoted by right-wing media outlets that the obvious pay discrimination faced by millions of American women is the result of their personal and professional choices.

In an April 28 post for The Washington Post's Wonkblog, reporter Danielle Paquette highlighted research from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and American Association of University Women (AAUW) demonstrating that pay disparities between men and women start as soon as students graduate from college, persist regardless of chosen career fields, and are actually worse for college graduates than for women with only a high school education. The research stands as yet more evidence against the misleading claim frequently pushed by conservative media outlets that the gender pay gap, if it exists at all, is actually the fault of women who pursue less lucrative professions and forgo career opportunities to have children and raise a family.

From The Washington Post (emphasis added):

Pay disparities between men and women start earlier in their careers than frequently assumed and have significantly widened for young workers in the past year, according to a report from the Economic Policy Institute.

Paychecks for young female college graduates are about 79 percent as large as those of their male peers, the think tank found -- a serious drop from 84 percent last year.

The sudden change follows a more gradual shift. In 2000, women ages 21 to 24 with college degrees earned 92 percent of their male counterparts’ wages on average, which was unchanged from 1990.

Regardless of their education, young women typically earn less money than young men in the United States. Female high-school graduates, ages 21 to 24, now earn an average of 92 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts.

[...]

Some have argued that the wage gap, at any stage of a woman’s life, starts with her choices. Women are more likely than men to scale back at work when they start a family, for instance. (Employers are also more likely to reward fathers and penalize mothers.) But EPI's data shows that the gender wage gap cracks open right after college graduation, well before decisions like maternity leave can affect women’s earnings.

[...]

A 2015 AAUW report of workers one year out of college found considerable pay differences between men and women in the same career fields.

Women who majored in business, for example, earned an average of $38,000, while men bagged just more than $45,000. In engineering, computer and information sciences fields, young female graduates earned between 77 and 88 percent of what their male colleagues made.

Across all fields, after controlling for major, occupation and grade-point average, the report found women still earned 7 percent less than men.