system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: The gender pay gap is largely explained by factors other than gender.

When I first started hearing about the general consensus that women are underpaid compared to their male counterparts, (sometime around 2015) I was quick to believe that it was a result of deeply-rooted, institutional biases by employers and business models. 

Since then, on several occasions, I have deep-dived, to try and find my own sources of information and get a clearer picture of what exactly was happening and why. 

Unfortunately, the more I read, the more I find that 

A- The wage gap is nowhere near as large as the general twitter-sphere claims it is (as much as 18%) and in reality it appears to be closer to 2%. 

B- Most of the reasons for this gap are explained by factors OTHER than gender, such as education, experience and industry. 

So, I have arrived at the conclusion that essentially, people are making a mountain out of a molehill and any attempt I make to point out that the pay-gap is not as widespread and gigantic as social-media clickbait would lead you to believe, I am made to feel like an ignorant misogynist. 

I really do want to have my view changed on this. I'm generally very progressive, and I want to be presented with information that will unlearn this viewpoint I have. 

 I find myself at odds with my girlfriend over it and I can't bring myself to just lie and say "You're right, women are overpaid everywhere because sexism, the end". 

Help me out, Reddit.
gpt
It depends on what you mean by including gender as a factor here.

On average, the main drivers of the "wage gap" are:

* Women on average tend to favor flexible hours over money. More women work part time than men. This is likely because women are still expected to do unpaid house and care work for their family should the need arise.
* Women tend to only apply to jobs they are fully qualified for. Men will apply to jobs that they are underqualified for.
* Women tend to be less bold in salary negotiations.
* Women tend to make different subfield choices than men, usually preferring more "people-centric" lines of work. For example, a roughly equal number of men and women graduate medical school, but more women tend to go into pediatrics afterwards, while more men go into anesthesiology. The latter pays more, so men in medicine will tend make more (because of all the aggregate subfield decisions in this direction.)

Now the question is: are women making these choices because they reflect their authentic desires, or because they feel pressured to? If you think that the difference in choice is primarily driven by how women are socialized, then there is still an issue here that could be resolved. It just pushes advocacy back a step to advocacy for cultural and norm changes. We could normalize women not taking time off to take care of their families, being workaholics who work 50 hours a week, etc.

On the other hand, if you think that women and men have naturally different psychological tendencies on average, then you might say the world is close to being just, even if we have different outcomes.