If bureaucrats get into these areas, then there will never be any solution that would make people satisfied.
How do you do this comparison for college graduates who become teachers vs. those who become petroleum engineers?
How do you do this comparison for secretaries vs. truck drivers?
How do you compare child care workers with unskilled laborers, or random hired help, or “gophers” on a construction job?
How do you address that the vast majority of skilled construction workers on those construction sites are men? While women can get training and apply for such jobs, it appears that very few women want to be plumbers or electricians, or pipefitters, or hang drywall or drive a bulldozer.
If we are going down this road, then liberals will never be happy because they will never find a comparison for which they will be satisfied that women are paid properly.
If your objective is to be ‘fair and equitable’, as defined by liberalism, then the bureaucrats are the only ones with the wisdom to address these concerns.
If a vocation produces wages that are not ‘fair and equitable’, then that is proof that the market is ‘unfair and inequitable’ and that the wisdom of bureaucrats must be substituted to rectify that. If teachers are predominately female and petroleum engineers are predominately male and teachers are paid less than engineers, then bureaucrats must intervene.
After all, a liberal will tell you, both teachers and engineers spend the same time in college and spend the same resources on their qualifications. Therefore, they are equally qualified and must be equally reimbursed. Small factors like the degree of difficulty in obtaining those qualifications are really unimportant to the liberal mind. Which, BTW, usually will not be found in the engineering fields.