Saying you need to control for things that have already been controlled for doesn't leave a particularly good impression.
To me it seems like an uninteresting tautology. Like these others:
“False statements about immigration numbers are often presented in discourse about naturalization policies”
“Misleading financial figures are often presented in discourse about what stocks to buy.”
It’s like... yah. So?
All discourse is full of garbage. If you are interested in the truth, you weed through that and evaluate the numbers and, according to best practices, find a good estimate.
When you do that, you find there is a substantial gender-attributable pay gap in many countries in many industries.
Why that is and how we change it seems like a worthy discussion.
I am curious to why you think the existence of people with a poor understanding of the facts is a worthy topic of conversation.
There will always be people in “the discourse” saying wrong things. If that’s all it takes to halt the important conversation about how women get pay equity, then you have yourself a surefire tool to ensure that conversation never happens. Or at least that you never have to participate.
(And as a side note, the existence of a raw 77% gap is factually true. Media would have to argue that it’s entirely due to sexism for them to step into territory you object to)
There certainly is sexism in the workplace, although the court ruled different I think Ellen Pao was a victim of this. That said, I don't know if it as prevalent and widespread so as to lead to meaningful and statistically significant wage gaps when all the factors are considered. Certainly the evidence for this sort of widespread institutionalized sexism is lacking in my mind.
Still I think the conversation here is more that the wage gap numbers are not as significant as they are often presented in discourse about gender equality