At the end of the day, women and women alone bear the decision to have a child so long as they have access to abortions. Men are not allowed, nor should they be allowed, to decide for a woman if she should bear a child or not. If she chooses adoption, all costs are paid by the parents. If she chooses to have a child, and if she chooses to include the father in that child's life (choices she alone makes) then the father must by law pay for a portion of the cost of that child.
I do think that single parenthood is an burden more so on the mother in most cases. This is one area we still need work on for both men and women, I agree. I personally am a proponent of a single payer health care system, which would mitigate the prenatal and OB issue altogether. But until that happens, health care will cost more for women because women cost more to maintain their health on average. If you don't like that then you have to overhaul the insurance industry to make everyone pay the same regardless of genetics. So the person with huge amounts of preexisting conditions due to genetics would pay the same as a very healthy person.
The book Why Men Earn More by Warren Ferrel has all the information you could ever want on the Wage Gap Myth. I did agree that a small number (around 5% I believe) is due to unknown causes which could be bias. But when you account for all other metrics, the 75 cents on the dollar is blown out of the water. We have laws making it illegal to discriminate against women, we have every ability to contest when we are paid less. It is our job as women to demand we get paid what we are worth, just as men tend to do.
The IWPR link was exactly the methodology I explained, and the gap is 80%. Median of all workers. That does not take into account career choices, hours worked, time off, education, etc.
IN the second link this quote is telling:
And even in 2014, women and men still tend to work in different kinds of jobs. This segregation of occupations is a major factor behind the pay gap.
So again, boiling down to women's choices. And again, this report depended on median income alone, although they did at least break it down to basic industries. But again, we do not know all those mitigating factors which make a worker more valuable to a company.
Third source is the same. These are not telling us much of anything. The studies are too broad to be of use.
My bottom line on wage gap- the sniff test. If it were truly so easy to save 25% of the costs of hiring someone, why would anyone hire a man? Business is all about the bottom line. If truly you could save that much money (we are probably talking billions of dollars for some companies) why on earth would they not be taking advantage of this? You think they are so sexist they are unwilling to save a ton of money? I think you underestimate most businesses joy of money.
Yes, there are far more men in politics, I never said otherwise. Nothing is stopping women from entering politics except their own choices. Women do not run for politics in very large numbers and women do not vote for other women in large numbers. This is not patriarchy, it is women's choices.
Women control the same amount of income in the US as men, so money is not stopping them. Yes, there probably is an old boys network among the older politicians, but there are enough women and progressives around to give a hand up to anyone interested in trying. The republican party is practically begging women to join, they flaunt every women politician they have in order to try to seem more supportive of women, even though they are obviously not in many ways.