But that WEF report takes into account other factors like health and wellness and political empowerment which sort of makes it a different, yet equally depressing beast. What Corbett and Hill did was look at pay statistics from full-time working graduates in 2009 (meaning the graduates who graduated from the 2007-2008 year). "After we control for hours, occupation, college major, employment sector, and other factors associated with pay, the pay gap shrinks but does not disappear," they write. And that's important, as someone who has one of those amorphous English degrees can do all kinds of work. And to that idea, they found:

Within a number of occupations, women already earned less than men earned just one year out of college. Among teachers, for example, women earned 89 percent of what men earned. In business and management occupations, women earned 86 percent of what men earned; similarly, in sales occupations, women earned just 77 percent of what their male peers earned.

Those findings in those specific professions debunk the general arguments that usually accompany studies like these: that women don't choose the same professions as men or that women may be more apt to go into fields like education and social sciences which pay less. (We ran into some of those critiques when we reported on a study which found female editors making less then their male counterparts.) And eliminating all those variables and argument makes it hard to ignore the pay gap or pretend it doesn't exist.

So what can we do about it (yes, we know this question is loaded)? According to Hill and Corbett,"To begin with, we must publicly recognize it as a problem. Too often, both women and men dismiss the pay gap as simply a matter of different choices." And women aren't off the hook either, "Although women cannot avoid the pay gap completely, they can make choices that enhance their earning potential," write Hill and Corbett who suggest things like taking initiative and negotiate salary offers, seek out union jobs, and pay attention to salaries associated to college majors.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.