Often it was much more than a 5% difference.
Each of your controls could easily be explained by sexism.
Seniority: if men are given promotions when their work was the same quality as women who were passed over, that’s sexism.
Hours worked: if men are given full time employment, women part time, even when both want full time, that’s sexism.
Field and specific profession: if women are encouraged by the exact same mentors to choose different fields, despite having the same credentials as men, that’s sexism.
I’m not saying these factors are the result of sexism, but it’s a bit weird to assume it is, while having data in the original article that indicates all of the above, at least in academic professions, are significantly affected by sexism.
This is not something that has been demonstrated to have been true, of course, but that would be the correct way of framing the argument.
Consider the hypothesis of "sexism against men": society considers all women valuable, but only values men who earn a decent amount of money. Men who earn little find it hard to date and have children.
Wouldn't this "sexism against men" spur men to choose high earning (but maybe not fulfilling) professions, while women would feel more free to aim for personally fulfilling (but lower earning) professions?
By the metric of earnings this might look like sexism against women, but by the metric of life satisfaction, it might look more like sexism against men.
I think it's relevant to how we approach a solution.
If the problem is "discrimination against educated women" then we need to educate people not to be biased against educated women.
If the problem is "discrimination against low earning men", we need to educate people not to be biased against low earning men.
My guess is that if women didn't prefer to date higher earning men, a lot of the wage gap would disappear. The social pressure to find a partner is huge, probably one of the strongest social forces in existence.
Especially because this entire argument is about the various forms of friction women face as they try to climb the professional ladder.
In humans women strongly prefer men who are more successful than them, are the gatekeepers of reproduction, and generally a greater proportion of women are able to pass on their genes than men.
By Darwinian logic this will inevitably result in a subpopulation of men who the most highly accomplished in certain sex selected traits in the species. This isn't excuse making its nature. I am consistently bemused at how the selfanointed intelligentsia of society that pride themselves on their rationality and scientific acumen refuse to accept this. You might as well cry about Gravity and hop up and down hoping you eventually fly up to the moon.