I tried searching the UN report as well and was not able to find the drilled-down data that would support the claim of wage inequality. I too think it would be absolutely stupid if a woman were paid less than a man for the same job (all else being equal), just because she is a woman, and would advocate for the elimination of such an injustice, but all I’ve seen coming from people making that claim are aggregate figures and loose averages comparing apples to oranges. How can we act to solve a problem if we don’t have the data to prove that the problem even exists.
It is like trying to debug a program by looking only at its pseudocode. Sure there is a general idea of what each class consist of and what each function does, but you need all of the actual code/syntax in order to determine the exact line that is causing the error, and to allow the programmer to home in on the exact variable/element/whatever that is preventing the program from running properly.
Assumptions are fine to start with, but they cannot be the basis for conclusions. Instead, an assumption can be used to determine the first (of many) angles and avenues from which to explore the problem, all efforts made to find the facts and ultimately the truth.
