I don't have to have things quoted to me. I see it every day when I compare men's salaries to women's at the company I work for.
Still, in the IT area, men usually make better money and/or get more promotions than women with the equivalent level of experience and skills.
Is that what you base your statement on? A simple comparison of salaries?
In my radiology department, several techs do exactly "the same job" but every one of them gets a different salary. The highest paid tech is a woman that has over 20 continuous years of seniority. The lowest paid tech is a woman with two months of seniority. In between those two, there are male and female techs all with different level of seniority all doing "the same job" and all getting different salaries.
Without taking into account the seniority that each worker has, your simple salary comparison is meaningless.
You could just as easily make the observation that, on the average, bald men (middle aged men with the most seniority) earn far more than men with acne (those straight out of high school or college who are at the bottom of the seniority totem pole).
The man or the woman that starts a job and sticks with it, full time, without taking a few years off here and a few years off there to go into the Mommy Track or to "find themselves" will end up making a higher salary for "doing the same job" as the female or male worker that makes a habit of bouncing in and out of the work force.
I work in Healthcare, so I do not see that at all. I think it is a myth as well. What field do you work in BushisTheMan?