Tangentially, I do believe my comment also calls the numbers into question and doesn't imply that women actually deserve 5% less pay. I would never advocate for

Tangentially, I do believe my comment also calls the numbers into question and doesn't imply that women actually deserve 5% less pay. I would never advocate for a person to make more/less money solely based on gender (or race, sexual preference, religion, etc for that matter). But there are a good number of possible and logical reasons why such a sub-set of a population might, in fact, make less money statistically. Yes, one can argue that some programmers make 5% less money BECAUSE they are women (cause and effect). While others can just as well argue that some programmers make 5% less money AND they are women (two unrelated facts). Mark Twain wrote in his autobiography: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."