As someone who has been personally affected by the gender pay gap, I felt compelled to respond to the follow letter about gender pay gaps: I am not convinced at all that the gender pay gap exists because of differences in career choice.

The jobs Mr. Shirtz mentions and believes men are more likely to take have median salaries of $40,240 (welders), $47,630 (oil rig workers), and $42,900 (bricklayers) - data for deep water fishermen was not available - according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The median pay for jobs that we might consider more traditionally female dominated is $57,720 (middle school teacher), $74,070 (dental hygienist), and $70,000 (registered nurse).

Also, and I am not alone among my friends and family in this experience, I found out in my mid-twenties that I was making several dollars an hour less than a male colleague despite the fact that I had more job responsibilities than he did. I only found out because another female colleague who worked on payroll told me. I was floored because I liked and respected my boss and considered him fair and therefore assumed he would make sure we were all being paid equally.

It never even crossed my mind to sue over this disparity, there is no guarantee in a lawsuit, it would have created a great deal of tension with my boss, and would have marked me as a "difficult" employee. Instead, I left the company. I'm now a small business owner myself and about to hire my first employee. I hope I won't make the mistake of my prior boss. Until it happened to me, I probably would have said gender pay differences weren't a big problem either.

But the truth is the opposite and it doesn't always or even often happen, as in my case, because of some "conspiracy" to pay women less, but rather because it is not the norm that bosses pay attention to this issue. I hope my story prompts other North Country bosses to look again at their payrolls and ask themselves whether their female employees really are being paid the same for equal work. As Ms. Seymour points out, it would make a big difference for women and their families in the North Country.

Anna Sommer

Canton