I've read both sides of the issue and it concerns me that every single paper I've read asserting the pay gap is based on gender must rely on comparing all men to all women.
In that sense I would even agree there is a gap that falls along gender lines, but the problem comes when those same people completely dismiss the fac that this gap begins to disaplear when you start analysing the data on an individual basis.
In other words, if you discount hours worked, age, profession, experience etc and you perform the comparison at the highest level "all men vs all women" then yes, the math will show that women on average are earning less than men. But what's more important is you find virtuly no disparity between men and women who are the same age posessing the same level of experience, working the same number of hours at the same job. That of course is the more important point, and to show good faith to you, in all honesty I would feel the same way you do if a woman and man doing the same job with the same skill sets were being paid differently. Imwhile that was true at one time no very long ago, I do not bieve that is the case any longer. I truely bieve theaws we passed and the efforts we made worked.
I am posting this Forbes article because it does a good job of showing the issues with the way the pay gap researchers are analysing the data. It's just a summary, you can easily find the peer reviews yourself.