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[–] konjelly 0 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago 

From this post:

Economist here, to claim that this shows gender discrimination is not occurring because wages within occupation wages are similar is generally incorrect. The economics literature has studied this gap extensively. Now I'll avoid going into boring details on methodology, but simply put YES there is a wage gap and YES the gap generally disappears in the data when you control for positions within occupation/job titles.

There is very little wage disparity within specific occupational titles (or tiers.) That is because the mechanism for discrimination lies within the promotional and title allocation process. Women are overqualified for their positions relative to their male counterparts. i.e. they generally have more education/tenure. Now companies are not necessarily discriminating because they have a preference against women, there are some other reasons. Female employees generally have a lower turnover rate and firms can exploit this by paying them less. Now firms don't generally just give women a lower wage, because that would be obvious and never hold up in court. Instead they promote women less frequently and put them in lower paying job titles. If you look at the differences in college educated wage growth, it suggests women don't get promoted/get placed in lower paying categories.