Statistically, men make more money than women do for doing the same job. It's called the "wage gap" and it is considered one of the last bastions of gender inequality in the workplace.

The wage gap hit its all-time low in 1973, when women could be expected to earn 56.6 percent of what a man would earn for the same work, according to the U.S. Women's Bureau and the NCPE (National Committee on Pay Equity). This was a decade after the Equal Pay Act of 1963 made it illegal for employers to pay unequal wages to men and women who held the same job and did the same work. (The percentage was 58 percent in 1963.)

In 2007, women could expect to be paid 80 cents on the dollar across all occupations, an improvement of less than half a penny per year, with numbers even further depressed among minorities: 64 cents per dollar for African-American women and 52 cents for Hispanic women.

<A HREF="http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Careers/Wage-Gap-Narrower-for-Women-in-IT/">IT professions faired better than most in 2007.</A> Computer support specialists appeared closest to closing the wage gap, with women earning 87 percent of what men did in the same occupation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The numbers beat the national average in other categories, including computer and information systems managers and computer programmers (85 percent) and database administrators, computer scientists and systems analysts (84 percent).