It’s a shocking fact that women are paid only 77 cents to every dollar a man makes. I personally had a hard time believing it because, in my head, it is obvious that women should be paid equally.

The year is 2015 in the United States. Women and men are equal and can do the same jobs, so they should receive the same salary, right?

Wrong.

Women and men do not make the same amount of money in nearly every occupation in every single state, according to The American Association of University Women (AAUW). Washington D.C. is the best place in the United States for pay equality, with women making 91 cents to every man’s dollar, while Louisiana is the worst, where women are paid 66 cents to every dollar a man makes.

For those who think the average pay of 77 cents to every dollar is not a big deal, let’s look at the math. If a man makes $100,000 with this discrepancy in pay, a women makes $77,000. That is $23,000 less than her male co-worker. As a society, the real question we should be asking is, “Why is this still happening? Why in today’s society is their still a wage gap among men and women?”

A USA Today article suggests one of the reasons women make less money than men is because they tend to enter jobs which generally pay less, such as education or social sciences, while men typically enter fields in engineering or computer science.

However, when men and women are in the same occupation, women still earn seven percent less than men, according to the AAUW. The rationale behind the difference is vague and non-specific.

The Center for American Progress reported that more than 40% of the gender wage gap is “unexplained,” meaning that there is no obvious, measurable reason for a difference in pay. However, gender discrimination is one potential factor for the difference in pay.

Women are more likely to take more time off of work than men when it comes to taking maternity leave, raising their children or caring for other family members. Thus a woman’s work experience is more abbreviated resulting in lesser pay.

Another element people do not think of regarding the wage gap is sexual harassment which results in discrimination. According to the WAGE Project, their webpage states, “After long and repeated sexual harassment, women leave or lose their jobs, potential raises, promotions, opportunities, emotional stability, ability to work, and sometimes their lives.”

After college, women also tend to take minimum wage jobs to begin paying off their college loans right away, according to the USA Today article. It would be a natural assumption that in a more dominated field, such as medicine, women would be making more money than their male counter-parts. However, a study done by the Journal of the American Medical Association states that even male nurses make $7,700 more than female nurses, even though the female-to-male nurse ratio is 10:1.

The popular Daily Show recently brought up the wage gap. The host Jon Stewart and his guest Kristen Schaal took a satirical look at the wage difference. They said that at the rate the United States is going, women will not receive equal pay to men until the year 2058. The show also speculated that people will be living on Mars and flying cars will be a common method of transportation before that time.

“Society makes it easier for men to go into higher-paying jobs and supports them more when they get them,” said Schaal.