Mainstream media headlines exploded with predictable outrage Thursday, reporting on the findings from another study on the popular gender “wage gap” trope. NBC News declared “Gender pay gap is worse than thought: Study shows women actually earn half the income of men.” Reuters headlined, “U.S. women earn half the income of men, new study finds.” But that far-Left rag known as Jezebel took the cake for the most emotionally unhinged headline: “The Gender Pay Gap Is Way More F—ed Than You Thought.”

The study was released by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and entitled “Still a Man’s Labor Market.” Such language is clearly contrived to continue promoting the myth that women are suffering sexist wage discrimination due to a misogynistic economic and western cultural system better known as the “patriarchy.” The study highlights seemingly damning statics such as this: “Women today earn just 49 cents to the typical men’s dollar, much less than the 80 cents usually reported.”

But as has been noted by many in the past, the devil is in the details — details that equality-of-outcome absolutists reject outright as insignificant because equality of outcome is their only standard for determining “social justice.” Ironically, details within the study actually undermine the headline presumption that sex-based discrimination is the leading cause for the gender pay gap. The study notes, “Comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges, women earn close to what men earn: Women in similar workplaces with similar titles and similar credentials make pretty much what their male peers do, whether they are fast-food employees making close to the minimum wage or corporate executives making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.”

So how exactly is it a “man’s labor market” if women working the same jobs as men earn the same as men?

The reason for the overall wage gap boils down to freedom of choice. The data shows that on average women choose to work fewer hours, work less overtime, and take more time off than their male counterparts. As a result, women take home less pay, even as they are paid the same hourly wage as men. This is basic math.

So what is really behind the continued promulgation of the gender wage gap myth? Two things. First, it is a political tool designed to misinform women voters into believing that more government is needed to end this “sexist injustice.” Second, it is an outright attack against America’s free-market economy, which is supposedly a system responsible for perpetuating injustice. Replacing it with socialism is the only way to promote “justice.”