To everybody saying the pay gap is a myth, all those report would like to disagree with you:
http://blog.dol.gov/2012/06/07/myth-busting-the-pay-gap/
Basically:
Decades of research shows a gender gap in pay even after factors like the kind of work performed and qualifications (education and experience) are taken into account. These studies consistently conclude that discrimination is the best explanation of the remaining difference in pay. Economists generally attribute about 40% of the pay gap to discrimination – making about 60% explained by differences between workers or their jobs.
Basically:
Discrimination is difficult to measure directly. It is illegal, and furthermore, most people don’t recognize discriminatory behavior in themselves or others. This research asked a basic but important question: If a woman made the same choices as a man, would she earn the same pay? The answer is no.
and
Ten years out, the unexplained portion of the pay gap widens. AAUW’s analysis showed that while choices mattered, they explained even less of the pay gap ten years after graduation. Controlling for a similar set of factors, we found that ten years after graduation, a 12 percent difference in the earnings of male and female college graduates is unexplained and attributable only to gender.
http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.abstract Basically:
In a randomized double-blind study (n = 127), science faculty from research-intensive universities rated the application materials of a student—who was randomly assigned either a male or female name—for a laboratory manager position. Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant. The gender of the faculty participants did not affect responses, such that female and male faculty were equally likely to exhibit bias against the female student. Mediation analyses indicated that the female student was less likely to be hired because she was viewed as less competent.
tl;dr:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it0EYBBl5LI
Basically:
1:14:Right, but so, this 16 to 21% number just looks at all full-time workers. It doesn't account for differences in education, or skills, or experience, or occupation. When you factor all that stuff in, the pay gap shrinks to somewhere between 4 and 8% depending on who's doing the math. This is the so-called "unexplained pay gap" that is, there is no economic explanation for it and most nonpartisan analyses agree that this part of the pay gap is directly due to gender discrimination.
and
4:31:And interestingly, even in careers dominated by women men disproportionately advance to supervisory roles. Like, most librarians are women, but male librarians are disproportionately likely to become library directors. And there are still large pay gaps within careers that employ mostly women, from nursing to librarianship. In fact, unless you really cherry pick the data, a real and consistent gender pay gap exists across almost all fields at all education levels at all ages. [...] In short [...] there IS a gender pay gap but it is not as simple as women making 77 or 79 cents for every dollar men make. Instead, it's an extremely complicated web of interwoven factors.