They don’t take less for the same work.
The gender wage gap is a lie, because it looks at average wages for men and for women across all ages and job categories.
Women with no skills get minimum wage as house cleaners, daycare workers, retail clerks. Men with no skills can make 10-20 an hour carrying heavy stuff on the construction site.
Women with a little job training work as medical assistants for ten bucks an hour. Guys will a little training make $20 or more in pest control, equipment operation, dangerous work that most women avoid.
Women going to college get 4 year degrees or more in childhood education, liberal arts and other fields that don’t pay more. Men statistically get more degrees in engineering, geology and fields that pay more. If these women wanted to make more, they’d get a degree with value in the workplace instead of building up their self-esteem and then wondering why few people want to pay them to be whiners. (Unfortunately, too many become chekists / political officers in HR.)
But the college system is biased toward women to the point that women earn around 60% of college degrees. And much of the marriage gap women complain about is that they don’t want to marry a well-paid blue collar man but instead compete over the smaller number of male graduates. Likewise, the workplace wonders where all the guys with skills for the jobs are, after preventing many from earning the credentials the workplace now requires.
IIRC, women make up the majority of med students now, as well as law...I think they also make up most of the physical therapy and pharmacists as well....
and don't forget nursing, which pays at least $50,000 right out of college....