The more education a woman has, the wider the gap between men’s and women’s earnings for the same work.

Taken at face value, the line points to a counterintuitive feature of gender inequality: higher credentials do not necessarily translate into equal pay, and may even coincide with larger disparities at the top of the labor market. The claim suggests that as women move into more highly educated, higher-status, or more specialized roles, structural factors—such as discriminatory pay-setting, unequal access to lucrative tracks, negotiation penalties, or glass-ceiling dynamics—can widen earnings gaps even when job duties are comparable. Attributed to O’Connor, it also resonates with her broader public attention to women’s professional barriers, though the statement reads more like a sociological observation than a judicial holding.