I live in Germany and tried to dig into the data a bit, and so far I am not convinced. It is very difficult to get precise data, for starters.
I am simply sceptic about the "everything is the same" claim - in many cases, how many instances of women and men with the exact same job, qualification and work hours did they even find? For example they claim female software developers earn less on average, but in 13 years working as a software developer, I have encountered only very, very few female software developers. I am highly doubtful that it is even possible to create a meaningful statistic here.
And there might be still more factors at work, such as willingness to relocate or preference for certain branches. If male software developers tend to work for car companies, banks or telcos and female software developers tend to work for ad agencies or create web sites for mom and pos's grocery store (just made up, I have no idea), it could make a difference for example. But as I said, it is very difficult to get that kind of data.
In the media I have seen worse offenses, for example the claim that female teachers earn less than male teachers, without mentioning that there are different kinds of schools (more women tend to work at elementary schools vs men working at high schools) - most teachers get a fixed salary determined by the government, so gender discrimination is next to impossible (there certainly is no government rule that female teachers earn less than male teachers). Or physicians, without mentioning that there are different branches of medicine and surgeons might have a harder job than pediatricians.
What strikes me is that none of those wage gap studies ever seems to question why the wage gap exists. For example they could ask employers or even the employees themselves. It seems they just want to prove discrimination and stop once they have favorable data.
In the media I have seen worse offenses, for example the claim that female teachers earn less than male teachers, without mentioning that there are different kinds of schools (more women tend to work at elementary schools vs men working at high schools) - most teachers get a fixed salary determined by the government, so gender discrimination is next to impossible (there certainly is no government rule that female teachers earn less than male teachers). Or physicians, without mentioning that there are different branches of medicine and surgeons might have a harder job than pediatricians.
What strikes me is that none of those wage gap studies ever seems to question why the wage gap exists. For example they could ask employers or even the employees themselves. It seems they just want to prove discrimination and stop once they have favorable data.