That interpretation is misleading for a few reasons.<p>One is that &quot;to the point of vanishing&quot; is still very nonzero. There&#x27;s a report by Consad Corporation prepared for the Department of Labor that reaches the figure 5-7% after accounting for differences in jobs (their website is down at the moment), even though it concludes that &quot;there may be nothing to correct.&quot; That&#x27;s also the number Sommers herself writes in her HuffPo article she cites in that Time article: &quot;After controlling for several relevant factors (though some were left out, as we shall see), they found that the wage gap narrowed to only 6.6 cents.&quot; So the Cornell claim of 8% is basically the same. I don&#x27;t think there&#x27;s an argument to be made that a 23% gender pay gap is a scandal but a 5-8% gap is totally fine.<p>The other is that  occupations, positions, education, job tenure, or hours worked <i>is</i> affected by existing wages. I was unemployed by choice for several months last year, learning Rust and working on a few open-source projects, and I became a more valuable job candidate as a result of that. I could not have done that without the savings to take those months off. If my previous job had paid me anywhere from 8% to 23% less, I would probably not have decided to take those months off, and in return I would have been a less competitive candidate and my job would probably have been one of lower position.