Lots of people have tried to dismiss the pay gap, but the only times the pay gap disappear is when you're dealing with government "hardcoded" pay scales.
Every time someone is allowed to decide on pay, females end up with lower rates, all other things considered. Including when it's a woman who decides other women's payrates.
In most states, women can (and when applicable, do) file cases against their employers for gender discrimination if they are doing the -same- job as a male employee but being paid less without having mitigating factors. The gap does exist, but not for the reasons that the liberal media (to think, I used to joke about conservatives saying the same thing) likes to pretend it does. Sexism isn't the driving factor, nor is outright discrimination in the case of minorities. It generally comes down to very unequal distributions of men and women in certain fields, and the attendant pay that comes with working in those fields. In nursing across the board, there is a 9 : 1 ratio of female to male employees, and the attendant pay that comes with those positions. Likewise, auto mechanics have a 1 : 12 disparity of women to men. But those can and often do pay similar wages depending on tier.
The food industry has some of the lowest (7/10) paying jobs in the nation, and the majority of tipped positions are filled by women. When they discuss their average wage, they are not taking lots of fun stuff into effect. One: Nobody in any state is making 2.13 an hour working in the food industry. But every tipped position gets broken down to some estimated subset with that as the baseline. Two: the -vast- majority of tipped employees in every state are not reporting their full incomes, even when closely monitored. Which means that women are being estimated lower than they are naturally, and reporting less than they are actually, and that's a -lot- of women at the bottom end of the perceived spectrum.
There's a lot more going on in other industries, such as the disparity of women in specific fields like STEM or Teachers. Not to mention the other issues such as shift preference, work preference, etc. that stems from non-sexism/discrimination factors. The problem is that women are being taught (largely by some very misleading media) that even if they do the same work to the same level as men with all other factors being equal, they are going to make 77% as much. Which hasn't been true in at least 20 years, yet it is still a constant talking point for liberal media pundits, SJWs, and 3rd wave feminists.
