The Equal Pay Day hoax is over. Gone are the days of women being misled to believe that rampant sex discrimination in the U.S. economy has robbed their paychecks.
As a society, we’ve finally woken up. Pay parity is not the goal; equal opportunity is. Women need not chase a one-size-fits-all definition of success; fulfillment is found in crafting a bespoke career and life. Flexible work is the way many women are achieving their definition of success.
This year, Equal Pay Day reportedly falls on March 27th. The faux holiday was established to illustrate how many additional days into the next year women work to equalize earnings with men. According to the most recent census data released in 2025, women earned 81 cents on the dollar that men earned in 2024, creating a 19-cent pay gap.
Each year, particularly under Democratic administrations, policymakers have called for commissions and bills, such as the Paycheck Fairness Act, to be passed. Feminists, activists, and Leftists rallied behind the outdated slogan “equal pay for equal work” to convince women that they are victims of pay discrimination, as evidenced by the pay gap. At best, these efforts are fruitless. At worst, they unfairly punish employers for differences in pay that are not attributable to sex discrimination but to choices.
It’s all been a hoax. The Equal Pay Act outlawed wage discrimination back in 1963. We don’t need a new law. If a woman feels she’s been mistreated by her employer, she can pursue legal remedies—filing a claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The pay gap is a misleading metric because it is calculated as the percentage of the median earnings of women working full-time, year-round as compared to the median earnings of men working full-time, year-round. This does not take into account the numerous choices women and men make that contribute to pay differences. When choices about occupation, education, industry, and hours worked are considered, the pay gap all but disappears.
Men work full-time more than women, and they work more hours per day than women. Women are overrepresented in lower-paying occupations such as childcare workers, preschool teachers, administrative assistants, and medical and dental assistants. Although women outearn men in degrees, they tend to pursue majors that prioritize fulfillment and flexibility over paycheck maximization. Also, men nearly universally work the most dangerous jobs that carry higher pay, and they account for over 90% of work-related fatalities in the U.S.
Men and women starting out in their careers have similar earnings, but a gap grows over time as women make decisions related to family. A new study confirms that women who can’t have children earn just as much as men throughout their careers. They confirmed that “nearly the entire gender earnings gap at prime working ages can be attributed to the impact of children on women’s careers.”
The luxury of being an American woman is that we have agency and opportunity at our fingertips. Self-employment, freelancing, and gig work have created a lane between trad wife and girl boss for women to find both financial security and fulfillment. Half of the nation’s 70 million freelancers are women. Moms raising kids and adult children caring for aging parents enjoy the flexibility to earn supplemental income or a living through independent contracting. Flexibility was the motivator for nine out of ten women who left the traditional 9-to-5 job to be independent.
The left has disingenuously claimed to fight for women. Meanwhile, the Biden administration sought to curtail independent contracting in America through regulatory fiat. California severely restricted independent contracting in 2019 through the infamous Assembly Bill (AB5), which decimated self-employment and drove up unemployment. Some lawmakers in Congress copied California’s restrictions into its big labor Christmas tree bill, the Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act), but thankfully, it never passed.
President Trump is proving to be a champion for working women. The Department of Labor recently proposed a rule clarifying whether a person qualifies as an independent contractor or is an employee. It overturns the confusing and complex multi-factor employment test implemented by President Biden that women, like owner-operator truckers, opposed and returns to a standard implemented in the first Trump administration, but that was subsequently overturned in 2024. The new rule proposes a clear employment test that considers two factors as the guideposts for worker classification: control over work and opportunity for profit or loss.
This rule provides clarity and certainty for employers, the absence of which has paralyzed organizations and small businesses for years. Congress should codify this standard to guard against a future president’s actions. California Representative Kevin Kiley’s Modern Worker Empowerment Act does just that.
Women are speaking up in support of the proposed Trump rule. Flexible work provides women with greater economic power, not empty slogans. We’ve moved on from Equal Pay Day. Now, it’s time to promote the real paths to opportunity for women every day.
Patrice Onwuka is vice president for economic policy and director of the Center for Economic Opportunity at Independent Women and co-host of WMAL-DC’s O’Connor & Company.
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