Women, it’s time to face a stark reality.

In 2006, females between the ages of 36 and 45 with four-year college degrees made only 74.7 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts, as reported by the Economic Policy Institute based on U.S. Department of Labor statistics. According to a Dec. 24 article in the New York Times, this is down from 75.7 cents just a decade ago.

This expanding disparity, however, shouldn’t be what’s causing alarm — it’s the fact that it all may be our own doing.

While many women commonly link gendered wage difference with workplace discrimination, these lingering gaps can be partially explained by factors often overlooked.

Differences in occupational interest between genders, for example, play a large part in this discrepancy. According to 2005 data from the Department of Labor, roughly 3.97 million women worked in “”professional and business services,”” compared to approximately 5.78 million men. However, 15 million women worked in “”education and health services,”” compared to only 5.6 million men. This drastic dissimilarity in one’s choice of field has an enormous impact on compensation. During that same year, the average worker in an “”education or health services”” field made only $16.72 per hour, whereas those in “”professional and business services”” earned an average of $18.07 per hour.

The Times article also pointed out an interesting phenomenon: Even in professional fields, like medicine, men and women have differing interests that have direct ties to salary levels. For example, from 2004-05, of residents training to be orthopedic surgeons, a mere 10 percent were women. Traditionally, higher percentages of women are found in fields offering smaller salaries, such as family medicine, dermatology and pediatrics.

While much less comforting than field choice, there may be another reason for these lower wages. With women’s role as the primary caregivers for children comes the endless distractions that accompany raising a family — distractions men are much less likely to entertain. For certain industries, there is a point when these family obligations become liabilities, which could help to explain the large gap.

Activists, however, remain dissatisfied with this traditional system of care because it often forces women to choose between work and their children.

UCSD professor M.E. Stephens, who teaches a class on gender equality and the law, feels that forcing women to choose is unfair because it leads to no meaningful solution that will fix the wage gap. Stephens, however, raises an interesting question.

“”Does the marketplace have to compensate her for that, [her role as the primary caregiver]?”” Stephens said.

The answer really depends on the market. While it may sadden women to hear, the truth is that markets have no obligation to accommodate mothers. That is not to say they do not deserve equal opportunity and equal pay for equal work, but women have to acknowledge that, at some point, childcare does get in the way of work.

There are, however, some occasions when the marketplace does treat women unfairly. For the women out there who have launched lawsuits against Wal-Mart/Sam’s Club, Boeing, Costco and Merrill Lynch for discriminatory actions, this is by no means an attempt to belittle that worthy cause. Wal-Mart, for example, deserves to be tried for its unwillingness to hire women in management positions despite their typically higher evaluation scores as does Sam’s Club (also a Wal-Mart company) for giving raises to promoted males without offering the same increases to a woman given a similar promotion.

Rather, this is an attempt to suggest that annual statistics do a poor job of reflecting reality, especially when they falsely lead us to believe these cases mirror actual trends.

So while some women protest discrimination and others campaign for friendlier markets, the majority of us are left wondering which bandwagon to jump onto. It comes down to what we deem as the real issue — and surprisingly, it is not the wage gap.

“”Women still disproportionately bear the responsibility for childcare and that has an absolute direct impact on how women can behave … in the workplace,”” Stephens said.

Instead of directing wasted energy on changing the pay gap — which provides only a sketchy picture of gender differences — efforts would be better spent on altering the way we parent, so that the workload is more equally divided between men and women, mother and father.

According to Stephens, part of the responsibility falls on society to give men the ability to play a different role in the home and do a different type of work. This will surely entail a lessening of the stigma attached to stay-at-home fathers.

Balancing childcare between parents is the equality we need to seek. This is the bandwagon. Climb on board.