Basically, in a study of federal workers, a 7% unexplained gap exists between male and female worker's wages when controlling for occupational, experiential and educational differences, among other things.
That's entirely possible, but it's not really what we're talking about. The women that don't get the job because of discrimination don't play into the wage gap because position is controlled for.
Discrimination is an important discussion in general, but most of the time it's extremely hard to prove that someone didn't get a job because the hiring officer was prejudiced. This wage gap stuff is easier to quantify and is a visible problem to solve.
It is misleading to say "Oh women get paid the same for the same work in tech", which implies there is no sexism, while acknologing that there could be sexism which keeps women out of well paid jobs.
I said there's a 7% unexplained gap in salary amongst government workers, implying that even controlling for most factors salary discrimination still exists.
At least it's no longer an integer multiple difference between male and female wages.
But why would we ever expect them to be 0% different? Recall that natural unemployment is ~3%. The market and real world are not perfectly efficient and making them perfectly efficient would make them less efficient in the process.
Yeah, sorry I wasn't more clear; specifically the difference is one of wages, not overall employment level.
I wouldn't expect uncontrolled wages to be entirely equal. I would expect that eventually controlling for employment history, experience, education etc. would make the difference approach zero, though. I think that'd be good.
Basically, in a study of federal workers, a 7% unexplained gap exists between male and female worker's wages when controlling for occupational, experiential and educational differences, among other things.
Especially relevant data is on pages 84-86.
(edited for clarity)