Most studies on this seem to show that gender based preferences can be at least partially explained from birth before any environmental factors play a part in it. People have been doing these studies for a long time now, but they get ignored because we don't like the results.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/

And of course, far more studies that have been going on for decades.

Biological preferences don't explain why careers preferred by women have less average pay than careers preferred by men.

No. But preferences do explain why women don't emphasize money in their career choice, whereas men do.

The vast majority of women will not continue dating a man who earns less than they do. Two thirds of young women in Germany expect their future partners to take care of them financially.

So for men, earning money and status is absolutely essential.

See also: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jul/02/a-lette...

What makes you think this is explained by biological preferences alone, or that those preferences scale to society-wide differences in salary?

(1) Actually, I didn't even mention biology. I just wrote "preferences".

(2) What makes you think it wouldn't? After all, it affects everyone in society. And motivation is a pretty powerful force, it is basically how our entire economy is structured.

See also:

https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/18/money-gender-a...

"...it typically takes a lot less money to get women to say they are satisfied with their work than it does to get men to say it."

"Women were more likely to tell PayScale that say they find their jobs “very meaningful” than men were, with 35 percent of women and 27 percent of men describing their jobs this way."

So women have more freedom to find meaningful jobs. Men less so.

I'm not entirely sure on which angle you're trying to discuss here. That biological preferences don't impact on the free market choice of employee-employer contracts? Or that biological preferences aren't overridden by a desire to earn higher wages?

For free market choice on which jobs pay more -- I think this one is pretty clear. Do you think differently?

As for biological preference, I don't think it takes into account the average pay at all. Career path is usually chosen at a younger and more idealistic age, and probably more importantly - poorer countries have women overriding their preferences and going into higher paid lines of work, while richer countries let women do what they want. As per this very study. In the case where money doesn't matter because your family is rich, biological preferences become more important and people stop choosing based on average pay. So the biological differences seem to explain it really well.

But it is also possible that the biology is affecting our inclinations, temper, or skills. After all modern psychiatry is attempting to look at the brain mechanically or to influence it with drugs. And intuitively, I find it hard to believe that our genes that affect so much of our physical abilities, likelyhood of illness, etc would stop at the brain and our behavior would be completely independent of our nature and purely a function of our environment.

Sure, and the study quoted in the article shows that. Environment is a factor, it just points in the other direction.

So if you assert that discrimination is the cause for the imbalance, the evidence shows that your assertion is wrong, because it makes the wrong prediction.

This is not just a matter of degrees it is a matter of sign (the arrow is pointing in the wrong direction).