One of the major faults in these analyses is to not account for cohorts — and so they discriminate against men in the here and now (fresh hires) to “balance” historic issues that haven’t aged out yet.
That purposeful (and misguided) bigotry is the basis of a lot of modern movements, like “anti-racism”.
The example of this is affirmative action. If you could wave a magic wand that perfectly equalized yearly pay between all races of people in the US, you would still see wealth disparities persist for many years (possibly generations, and possibly not get any better), because wealth and financial literacy are passed down through families and interracial marriage is somewhat uncommon. Affirmative action (explicit discrimination on the basis of race) deliberately and purposefully seeks to counterbalance against this effect.
Now, I think that that issue is better solved by higher inheritance taxes, mandatory personal finance classes in schools, and more equitable school funding, but the point is that it's not always a lack of understanding of age cohorts that drives such policies. It's possible to understand the real logic behind such policies and still disagree with them.