I agree, but the fact remains that as long as only women can bear children, women (statistically) will always take more time off than men — in a sane world several months per child at an absolute minimum to limit physical and mental stress to the mother/child — thus the statistics will always reflect a pay gap when compared to males, and if the goal is reducing the pay gap to zero this is impossible (esp under capitalism, for the foreseeable future). Even if men took identical time off they’d still have a much lower physical stress.

Australia’s maternity leave and social benefits are in the upper percentiles of the developed world, and the ATO/Treasury figures I shared are in spite of those benefits. There is simply no way to give mothers back time to recoup lost work xp, and that would be a horrifically poor goal anyway.

My argument isn’t that women don’t deserve equal pay for equal work (incl xp, in whichever jobs that legitimately matters). It’s that there will always be a gap as long as there are inherent biological differences which naturally result in career variances between genders, and the only thing that should matter is whether that difference is fair and non-discriminatory. Most of the real stats I’ve seen over the last decade (as in, produced by demographers and statisticians; not rage bait for clicks) don’t show a significant pay gap in the developed world, when the natural biological variance is accounted for. If you’ve seen anything that indicates otherwise, go ahead and share it.