A large factor for that is part of male biology does not involve popping out another person. It is unsurprisingly taxing on a person and their career to undergo this.

While the issues you mentioned exist one sex is put out of commission for a period of time to continue our species. The other isn't. The sex that can work their entire lives unsurprisingly makes more money.

Of course any individual man / woman / person can operate outside of this trend but we are talking about trends not individuals. It's a statistical impossibility for all women to make the same as all men. Due to this one imbalance in our propagation.

It's been a few years since I looked at it but if you account for those extra factors women made more money per hour than men in my field (software development). The only reason that men appeared to have an edge is because they literally worked more hours.

If you want to see a pay gap that will knock you on your ass look at the gap between rich and poor. Now that's a fucking pay gap. Maybe it's not that women don't get paid enough. Maybe most people don't get paid enough and focusing on the fight over a mighty small slice of pie ignores that some other group is holding enough pie for everyone. At the top its a lot of rich white men, but they have wealth in common more than their gender. The rich women at the top didn't come from the bottom either. If there is any fight to be had about pay gaps it's been the haves and the have nots. The entire gender pay issue is a very convenient distraction to the real pay issue.

At the same time people profit off of the outrage in the gender issues. Running articles to drive ad sales. Antagonizing women telling them how terrible they have it. Then an echo fires back to ensure to capitalize on the return outrage, selling articles like the one above. Making the non issue seem even worst and obfuscating the real source of inequality. Class, not gender.