Seattle - Each year May 11th is touted by self-appointed women's advocacy groups as national "pay equity day," a reference to the assertion that "women earn only 76 cents on the male dollar." Closer inspection reveals this to be a shaky conclusion based on a narrow, selective reading of the facts. Here are some additional statistics that present a more balanced and complete picture of women's earning power in the modern workplace.

The "76 cents" figure does not include a comparison of men and women with similar training, education and work experience.

The "76 cents" figure includes only full-time jobs, it ignores part-time work. Many women prefer the flexibility of holding part-time employment, and having the freedom to enter and leave the workforce at different points in their lives.

A look at the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth shows that when age, education and experience are taken into account, women's earning power is almost the same as men's.

Today, many prestigious, high-paying jobs are held by women. Some examples: In 1970 just 12% of pharmacists were women, by 1998 that figure had risen to 44%. Over the same period women have risen from 5% to 29% of lawyers, from 27% to 66% of public relations specialists, and from 39% to 62% of professional psychologists.

Women make up 60 million of the nation's 138 million workers and have more than doubled their salaries, in real terms, over the past 50 years.

Today women make up about 46% of the total workforce and hold about half of all managements jobs.

A Business Week survey of the class of 1998 in the nation's top 25 business schools found that men and women with similar educational experience in consulting, finance and marketing received the same median starting salaries.

Over the last five years the number of women in senior management positions at Fortune 500 companies has tripled.

Today, the majority of college, associate and masters degrees are earned by women.

The majority of students in college and in graduate schools are women, and has been since 1984.

More women are in the "pipeline" training for professional excellence and achievement today than at any other time in our nation's history.

Radical feminists automatically assume that when statistics do show unequal outcomes in the workplace they must be caused by some kind of invisible gender discrimination. They ignore the individual decisions women make about whether or not to stay in the workforce.

Such an assumption is disrespectful because it devalues the voluntary choices many women make to spend their time and talents on volunteer work, family or self-employment.

Our society should praise and value all the different kinds of valuable work women do for the benefit of their families and communities, not just the work that is measured in dollars.

Note: To combat misperceptions about women in the workplace the Independent Women's Forum will hold a press conference on "The Myth of Equal Pay Day" on Wednesday, May 10th at 12:30 pm at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. Organizers can be contacted at (703) 558-4491 or www.iwf.org.