Than you for making clear that you do not agree that my point is valid or valuable criticism.

My objection to the word choice of harmless is based on my feelings, which I have not fully examined, that there may be harm.

Point the second - Hypothetically, if this:

the difference in average pay between women and men is mostly attributable to differences in ambition and time voluntarily spent at home with children.

is true, then gender pay inequities do have an innocuous explanation- namely, the above. Kaj_Sotala made no claims beyond that, certainly not to the extent of claiming the above statement is true in the real world.

Hypothetically, I agree with you.

I think I am having the most objection, in the statement you quote, with the phrase 'mostly attributable'. I can think of several other reasons that can and do account for a gender-based inequity, all possibly innocuous. The one that springs to mind is something to do with women and negotiation of payscale, but as I look for resource that can explain what I mean by that more clearly than I have managed to, I came across another interesting theory on wikipedia, that I had never heard of before. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_pay_for_women#Different_Studies_and_Economic_Theories

"They interpret their findings to suggest that employers are willing to pay more for white male employees because employers are customer driven and customers are happier with white male employees. They also suggest that what is required to solve the problem of wage inequality isn't necessarily paying women more but changing customer biases."

This difference does not seem so harmless. Do you agree?