Why? The pay gap is real and was nearly an aside in the article. This article is about a woman being mistreated by men in tech. This comment seems to be as well.
In reality the wage gap is rarely as cut and dry as "women get paid less than men for the same jobs".
It's a separate point that isn't going to get her much sympathy in many circles, because that pay gap could be less real than you think.
18% less could be a result of negotiating skills or any other confounding factor. How has she quantified her qualifications vs all other male employees?
No need to add this unsubstantiated drivel to an otherwise potentially useful insight.
She wouldn't have needed to approach HR in the first place if not for the systemic abuse from males within the company.
There's no way I'd ever date a women who worked in HR. Once, many years ago, I met a woman on an online dating site who worked in HR for some big retailer. She made a comment (in the messaging app, we never met) disparaging the people who interviewed to work there. I commented that maybe if they paid better, they'd get better applicants. Never heard back from her after that. (No, she didn't work for CostCo; they're famous for paying well for those types of positions, and having very loyal and hard-working employees as a result.)
It seems like HR people are really the worst kind of people: they're just rank-and-file employees usually (except the HR Director), but they'll happily defend the very worse corporate treatment of employees.