Don't believe the hype: In the real world, women still make less than men (CNN)

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But even before the ink was dry on [President Obama's] executive orders, wage-gap deniers were trotting out the same old tired arguments we've heard for years. Rationalizing or outright denying that pay inequity exists, and dismissing the equal pay push as a political ploy designed to distract from other, "real" issues.

Yet for millions of women struggling on the brink of poverty, the wage gap is all too real.

Despite increasing education and greater professional success, women in the aggregate still make less than men: on average, 77 cents on the dollar, and even less if you are black or Latina. This persistent pay gap has real implications for women and their families, especially when 40% of our nation's households with children rely on women as a primary or sole source of income.

That 23-cent disparity means a yearly wage gap for women of more than $11,000. And what does that translate into? On average, working women in the United States can afford 91 fewer weeks of food for their families, 13 fewer months of rent, and more than 3,000 fewer gallons of gas per year as compared to men.

While it's true the wage gap is due to a combination of factors, study after study has shown the wage gap — as much as 40% of it — holds true even when we control for factors such as education level, profession or position. It cannot be fully explained by personal choices, and can be attributed in some measure to overt or unintentional gender-based discrimination.

The gap manifests out of the gate and only widens over time. A 2012 report from the American Association of University Women, "Graduating to a Pay Gap," made an "apples-to-apples" comparison of college-educated women and men working full time one year out of school. After controlling for college major, occupation, hours worked per week, economic sector, and other factors, women still made 7% less than what their male counterparts made.

And in an earlier report, the association found that 10 years after graduation, the unexplained pay gap widened to 12%.

Indeed, women's wages are lower in nearly all occupations -- doctors, lawyers, even low-wage workers. And this is true regardless of whether the job is one performed predominantly by men, predominantly women, or an even mix of both.