The gender wage gap is the 0.77 dollars that women earn for every dollar men earn (Westley, 2013).  Its existence, at least in aggregated statistics consisting of raw data, is largely not disputed by the academic community.  The disputed question is, "Is systematic sexism among the major factors that contribute to the gender pay gap?"  My interest in this question comes partially from hearing the issue discussed in both a political setting on television and in a classroom setting in economics.  On the one hand, I have received largely conflicting points of view from the two, because the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, suggests gender based discrimination as the reason for the gender wage gap (Westley, 2013).  Many proponents of the law feel that the gender pay gap is caused by the market and the poor treatment that women have received by employers.  Legislation and an increase in awareness of the issue are seen as the way forward in the path toward equality.    On the other hand, economics would give differences in marginal utility and hours worked as the reason for the wage gap (Mises, 1940).  The research gave me an interesting perspective on the issue because once I starting researching from an economic point of view, thinking beyond the issue of discrimination, I began looking to women's and gender studies works that discuss differences between men and women in society that lead to differences in time spent in the workplace.  I don't have any personal experience regarding this issue, but I think my qualifications come from the research I have done.

"Lilly Ledbetter Re-reconsidered" is an article from the Mises institute.  Its main claim is that in an economy, wages tend to reflect marginal utility (the productive value that an additional worker adds) (Westley, 2013).  Over time, and especially in the case of a large company, this should be further manifested because of an established pay structure and a pre-existing awareness that good employees will leave for other jobs if they aren't paid a market rate (Westly, 2013).  Essentially, if Lilly Ledbetter was as underpaid as she claimed, she should have been able to find another job that would pay her more (Westley, 2013).  The article also condemns legislative solutions to this perceived problem and warns of unintended consequences (Westley, 2013).  The author holds a PhD in Economics, so he is well versed in the field and in my opinion qualified to hold an opinion on the subject.  The author is a conservative economist, so his bias against a law and a concept that go against conservative economic principles is obvious.  Interests at stake in this article are those of women who could potentially receive higher wages, but who also might be unemployed as a result of the legislation, and also those of businesses with female employees who might need to either pay them more or terminate.

The article by Robert Higgs focuses on the topic of gender pay gap, and begins with the assertion that employers do not pay women less than men for equally valuable work (Higgs, 2015).  The article gives an economic example as evidence in which a business pays women 40 dollars an hour and gains 50 dollars in benefit for each woman and another business that pays its women 41 dollars per hour and gains 50 dollars in benefit for each woman (Higgs, 2015).  The result would be that the female employees would be hired away from the first firm and move to the second firm (Higgs, 2015).  The two businesses would go back and fourth on hiring the women if they desired to compete in the market until eventually the woman's salary approached her marginally utility (Higgs, 2015). The fact that women earn less must necessarily be due to marginal utility (value added to a business due to productivity) because economic law dictates and it can be shown through thought experiment (Higgs, 2015).  At stake in this article are a political idea and an economic fallacy.  The major stakeholders are women, economists, employers, and politicians whose careers are at stake.  Robert Higgs is a PhD economist trained at Johns Hopkins and a fellow at the Mises Institute.  He has a bias toward free market economics since that is his background. 

Human Action is a Treatise on Economics written by economist Ludwig von Mises.  The assertion that is made in the section on wages is that in a market setting, the upper bounds of wage bids are determined by the expected return that a laborer will bring to an entrepreneur (Mises, 1940).  The lower bound is whatever the laborer will accept (Mises, 1940).  This is why it is said that wage rates are determined by the marginal utility of labor (Mises, 1940).  Additionally, the only way to determine the actual wages of a worker is by the continual process of bidding on what a laborer has to offer (Mises, 1940).  All of these assertions are backed up with logical evidence throughout the chapter.  The author held a PhD in economics and was one of the finance ministers for the Austrian government during the time of the Hapsburg Empire and after World War I.  His bias was in the direction of free market economics.  The book will serve as a background source at the beginning of the paper.  For this book at the time of its publication, the interests at stake were the extremes of economic liberalism and fascism.  In modern times, the interests at stake are those of free market economics and price fixing schemes put into law.  

The argument is that women may have lower total earning, they do not receive lower pay for substantially equivalent work as asserted by the Lilly Ledbetter Equal Pay Act of 2009.  It is arguable from an economic standpoint as well as on a sociological and biological standpoint.  Sources would disagree on whether or not women are being treated fairly, but the free market sources are not completely in disagreement with the feminist sources, which give reasons that gender roles in society affect a woman's life in work and by extension her salary. I will focus more closely first on the economics of why equal work for unequal pay isn't possible, and then on the different mechanisms that lead to differences in marginal utility, and thus differences in wages.  

