April 12 was Equal Pay Day, the date women on average catch up with what men were paid the previous year. As Hillary Clinton vies for the White House, expect to hear more about equal pay for women. As explained by National Public Radio on April 16, "it's essentially impossible to win the Democratic nomination without support from women."

The gender pay gap should vanish soon, as indicated by local and national trends. It won't be the work of politicians.

Federal data tell us women generally earn 79 cents for every dollar earned by men.

The issue is red meat for advocates of wage mandates, as it presents a problem they can promise to solve with the ease of regulation. The prospect of mandates for equal pay is similar to the promise of raising minimum wages for full-grown adults stuck in temporary starter jobs. The bandage of wage mandates does not address the cause, which is social and economic.

Some politicians like to present the gender gap as mere sexism, though it is not that simple. The statistic is affected by multiple factors, some more or less fair than others.

The Los Angeles Times recently assessed studies pertaining to the gender gap and linked it to three key factors:

—Women traditionally choose fields where salaries are lower and perform jobs that pay less.

—Women tend to ask for less money when hunting for new jobs and leave the table with less; though women who asked for bigger salaries than men often get them.

—Discrimination. A Cornell University study determined a chunk of the pay differential could not be explained by measurable attributes of workplaces.

Variables culminating in the gender gap are complicated enough to affect even those employers who claim to worry about it most. Clinton ranks among an impressive lineup of equal-pay advocates who have been found paying less to female employees than their male counterparts. During her time in the U.S. Senate, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon, Clinton paid women in her office 72 cents for each dollar paid to her male employees.

Here's the good news. Market trends, led only by the will of individual women, signify an imminent end to the gender gap. Women have quickly overtaken men in education. They are enrolling in college in greater numbers and earning more undergraduate and post-graduate degrees than men. In the past three decades, women have gained on men in professional experience. Though disparity persists, it has shrunk from 59 cents on the dollar in 1964.

The rapidly increasing levels of education and experience among women are leading to an entrepreneurial renaissance that has females as the leading founders of new businesses. As reported in The Colorado Springs Gazette on Monday, the number of women-owned businesses in El Paso County, Colorado grew by 45 percent between 2002 and 2012. Female entrepreneurs are out-pacing overall business startups.

The local data parallel a nationwide trend of women forging their way as captains of industries big and small, from Wall Street to Main Street.

Politicians on the right and left should remove all remaining regulatory obstacles that stand between women and their potential in the market. But women don't need bandage regulation that pretends to solve the gender gap. They have chosen to take charge, and will quickly make gender-based disparity a thing of the past. The ongoing solution — education, leadership and entrepreneurial will — is sustainable, substantive and real. To quote TV's fictional-but-shrewd Jock Ewing: "Nobody gives you power. Real power is something you take."

REPRINTED FROM THE COLORADO SPRINGS GAZETTE