This is his wall of text and he left this in the comments of the comic book girl 19 ghostbusters review video.

Wage gap is certainly a wider subject than sexism, and you'd be a fool to think that sexism is the only reason for the wage gap. I don't think anyone here is arguing that sexism the only reason.

However, you're a just as big a fool if you think sexism (intended or subconscious) plays no part in the wage gap. Here's a study showing that female (and black) doctors, after accounting for differences in hours and skills/experience, tend to get paid less: http://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2923

Other posters and myself have also provided several other studies in this thread showing that women are paid less for the same job as men on average in some professions.

Again, sexism is NOT the sole contributor. It's unlikely to even be the largest contributor. But it's incredibly important to study and understand ALL factors that contribute to the wage gap. Some we are okay with (if women don't want to be CEOs, we can't force them to be), and some we'll want to lightly intervene with (encouraging more women to want to be in government positions is a good thing!).

Legally, I think North America's at a good place for workplace discrimination laws, we can't be prosecuting businesses without absolute proof of blatant sexism. As such, no one's really lobbying for more in that regard.

BUT sometimes sexism is subconscious and people don't realize they're doing it. Here's a study showing that some STEM employers were subconsciously choosing male resumes over the SAME resume with a female name: http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2014/why-does-john-get-stem-job-rather-jennifer There's more studies that show the same thing, but I like this one in particular because they also study a solution: simply informing people of their subconscious bias made it go away, and BOTH fake applicants (who's resumes were exactly the same) were accepted.

And that's really why accepting that the wage gap is a thing is important. By accepting it exists, and that you might have an subconscious bias: you significantly reduce your chances of having a subconscious bias, meaning that you're more likely to hire the right person for the job regardless of gender.