Why is it surprising to anyone

People have opinions and they look for evidence that supports it. Often they haven't read the academic literature and don't seem to get what is meant by institutional sexism (or racism). It's not a lesbian feminist saying nasty men are being sexist. It's that the institutions make discrimination a rational decision, or that on a societal macro level groups are disadvantaged without the need for any one individual to be a dick.

So you fix/compensate for it on a societal level. Ie: paid paternity leave, subsidized child care, different role models, etc.

Another big issue with the gender wage gap is cultural.

Same thing goes for 'patriarchy'. On reddit people seems to think it means lesbians think nasty men oppress women. In 'feminist' academia (not tumblr) it means an unjust social system that oppresses men AND women. Eg: the idea that only women can be victims, that women can't be perpetrators, that men should be providers or that women are naturally more empathetic.

I mean, does Terry Crews look like Aziz Anzari? No. Gender is a spectrum. Some men are better than some women at some things, and vice versa.

(As a side note, as a guy who took a couple of gender studies electives and was pleasantly surprised, nothing pleased me more than seeing a female feminist/gender studies professor making fun of the purple haired misandrists who thought they'd found a kindred soul.)

Just look at nursing. An almost entirely female job because supposedly only women give a shit and have empathy. Meanwhile most nurses have a shitty back and dead knees by the time they're 40. Nursing is the kind of job that some men would be far more suited to, due to the physical requirements. But no, you have four bitchy 100 pound nurses lifting an obese man. These tiny women have been told that they're innately more empathetic. They have gone into nursing where there were few if any male colleagues, because being a nurse is 'gay' or for failed doctors. Because being a nurse doesn't pay enough to be a 'provider'.

I mean it's ridiculous. I'm a teacher with three degrees, yet society tells us that a women is innately better at raising children because vagina. I know male colleagues who keep working a shitty job as a teacher, while their wives quit high paying jobs to take care of the kids. It's absurd. Who's better at raising children? A female lawyer or a teacher with years of experience and an advanced understanding of developmental psychology.

I apologize for the rant. It just annoys the fuck out of me how much talent is wasted due to archaic gender expectations. A large proportion of reddit's male userbase is shooting itself in the dick by being cunts who are unwilling to educate themselves.