Some nice things about why the wage gap myth exists.

From this solid-ass source.

A greater percentage of women than men tend to work part-time.  Part-time work tends to pay less than full-time work. 

A greater percentage of women than men tend to leave the labor force for child birth, child care and elder care. Some of the wage gap is explained by the percentage of women who were not in the labor force during previous years, the age of women, and the number of children in the home. 

Women, especially working mothers, tend to value “family friendly” workplace policies more than men. Some of the wage gap is explained by industry and occupation, particularly, the percentage of women who work in the industry and occupation.

Factors, such as work experience and job tenure, require data that describe the behavior of individual workers over extended time periods. The longitudinal data bases that contain such information include too few workers, however, to support adequate analysis of factors like occupation and industry. Cross-sectional data bases that include enough workers to enable analysis of factors like occupation and industry do not collect data on individual workers over long enough periods to support adequate analysis of factors like work experience and job tenure.

tl;dr for the rest of the source: raw data suggests women make less than men on average, when the fact of the matter is that women take more time off work, which leads to less pay, women work more part time positions, which leads to less pay, and choose industries which pay less all around. This means that a man and a woman working in the very same profession more likely than not do make the same amount of money, but the “wage gap” statistics infer that they don’t make the same amount of money in the same profession, even though those stats cover an entire workforce.

Statistics, bitch.