> For example the layman has been told women are paid 73 cents for a dollar for the same work, and people constantly vote to raise women’s salaries based on the assumption it is true, because TV said so. Yet programmers who use spaces instead of tabs are paid 20% more, showing that even the slimmest external variable can double one’s salary, not even talking about internal variables.

It's worse than that, because the media keeps saying "73 cents per dollar for the same work" when, first, the current number is 79 cents (73 cents is out of date), and second, it's not for the same work, it's overall across all jobs. For the same work it's around 95 cents, which is within the margin of error.

Basically, the "wage gap" doesn't even exist.