There have been a bunch of studies of this, and the conclusions are pretty consistent: women aren't paid less for doing equal work, they're paid less because they end up doing less or lower-paid work once they have children, because they do a disproportionate share of the childcare.
This should still be fixed, but it means the fix is mostly about what happens at home, not what happens at work, which is much more difficult.
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-true-story-of-the-gende...
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.p20161124
There have been a bunch of studies of this, and the conclusions are pretty consistent: women aren't paid less for doing equal work, they're paid less because they end up doing less or lower-paid work once they have children, because they do a disproportionate share of the childcare.
This should still be fixed, but it means the fix is mostly about what happens at home, not what happens at work, which is much more difficult.