Equal pay for equal performace. Who would not be outraged if one social group would attain a considerably larger salary doing exactly the same job as others do?
Whenever politicians and opinion leaders are bringing up the subject of the so-called Gender Pay Gap, more often that not they are taking it from an unadjusted pay gap. Calculating it is, according to its article on Wikipedia, fairly easy: it is typically the difference between gross hourly earnings of a sample of male and female employees represented by a percentage or ratio.
Percentages may vary across samples but it is generally thought to be around 20%.
The fact that is deliberately swept under the rug in public discourse is this: there is also an adjusted Gender Pay Gap filtering out any structural differences not pertaining to gender alone. Just considering a very basic factor alone, like amount of hours worked by gender, lets Pay Gap melt away considerably. The more factors you put into consideration, the more Gender Pay gap is reduced to a percentage as low as 2%, which is not even considered statistically significant anymore. Other factors could be qualification, years of experience on the job, type of employment.
Therefore Gender Pay Gap does not establish what people in general tend to beliefe, it does not show female employees earning less money for comparable performance. The demand for equal pay in this case is as absurd and unfounded as granting equal pay for full-time and part-time employess alike, in total disregard of amount of hours put into work. Needless to say, nobody would work full-time if there was equal pay for part-time employment. This is but an oversimplified example how equality of outcome impedes performance rather than benefitting towards it. Equality of outcome can only ever be pursued under heavy coercion and tyranny, which there are numerous and horrendous examples for in history. What society should strive for instead is equality of chances, which I believe there is consensus for on both sides of the political spectrum.
Now I am aware that there is a difference between biological gender (sex) and gender as a social construct as postulated by disciples of Gender Theories. Whether you believe in one over the other, there is grounded evidence that people are already getting equal pay irrespective of their gender by bringing their marketable value to the table. Want to improve your salary? Just do what other high-earners would do!
Personally, i can understand if one would rather not participate in the hamster wheel that is corporate careers. But then there is no grounds to demand for something, which you haven´t contributed as much as other people that are a little bit ahead in the rat race.
Citing Gender Pay Gap, especially its unadjusted numbers, for me shows one thing: how much general discourse is deliberately poisoned by considering only one side of the coin and embezzling every aspect contradicting the desired narrative. In the end there is not only a pay gap, but a gap in society where one cannot discuss with anyone else in a rational and constructive manner.
There is also historical proof for intentional destruction of any basis for constructive general discourse and it is not only the Internet. It has been an issue since invention of the printing press, if not even earlier. But that is topic for a whole different article.