(2) Tom, to be crystal clear: I think both dismissals are equally bad things to do. My point is that people, you included by the look of it, will suggest it is natural to see differences when said differences disadvantage women. But if a similarly important disadvantage befalls men, it is "a problem" which implies it must be corrected.

Why can't both things be bad?

So, nobody is suggesting that wage gaps are fake. They're asserting it as undisputable fact. Find a place where men and women of equal experience, time at work and so on are being paid differently because of their gender and you have an easy lawsuit on your hands. In practice this doesn't happen because such discrimination doesn't happen.

Women nonetheless earn less because of choices they make, like choosing to work in HR instead of software engineering. This is not a crisis.

Re: (2) you seem to be cherry picking. It's been shown that female primary school school teachers are biased towards girls and some researchers have even started suggesting that this is partly responsible for increased female grades over time. Regardless, virtually nobody is claiming the total and absolute dominance of women in primary-age teaching is a crisis or a problem that needs solving. In fact it's trivial to find cases where men appear to be disadvantaged relative to women and there's absolute silence from the media, from politicians, etc.

There are hundreds to thousands of such lawsuits every year. And within a month of California rolling back forced arbitration, more popped up. Including 2 high profile class action lawsuits.

Maybe instead of listening to a man who thinks synonyms are clever life advice, you should research the actual subject. Comments like this suggest you don't have any understanding of the subject at all.

Why can't we require all employers to disclose, if not to the public then at least to all employees, contractors, and associates, everyone's compensation information? Why do we allow this information to be private?

I've talked to a few people who are "woke" but when I bring up transparency, almost everyone balks. Almost everyone thinks they are above average when it comes to salary negotiation but I don't know why they prefer to drive blindfolded.

They say things like privacy but salary is public information for public sector employees.

Thoughts?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gender_equality_lawsui...

It only has one in the last three years. Moreover, a quick news search for 'gender pay discrimination lawsuit' shows that most news articles discussing such things are actually more about #metoo / sexual harrassment stuff and always only allegations, it's much harder to find reports of actual findings of systematic discrimination. And in the rare cases it has happened, it's always arguable because the jobs are usually not directly comparable e.g. high level executives where personal performance can vary wildly and people are comparing across quite different jobs but claiming they're equal.

Your reply doesn't give me any new information to work with, and my own experiences and checks says this doesn't happen. In cases where men are getting paid more than women, it's usually because they're being more effective, not because their boss explicitly decided women should get paid less.

So I'm not sure I could possibly agree with your assertion as written.