Equal Pay for Equal Work

Politicians like to use wedge issues. They are designed to make people fearful or angry and further divide us. Trump and immigration is a very crude example but both parties do it. President Obama pledged to be a post-racial president but instead has been fanning the flames of racial discontent.
Equal pay for equal work has been in the news. Yesterday was “Equal Pay Day”, supposedly the day women earn what a man made last year. We have heard that women make 79% of what men earn. This misleading figure is taken by comparing the median pay for each gender. It does not factor in time women take off to care for family or differences in career choices.
I’m not sure what politicians want other than votes. Are they proposing women should be paid more so the statistics work out? Full time pay if women work part time? A company with a male CEO paying some female employee the same salary? Equal pay for equal work has been the law of the land for over fifty years. If there is any real discrimination, I hope the perpetrators are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Rather than falling prey to politicians who seek to divide, let’s vote for ones that seek to unite.