That is not what your report says.
Ah yes. A couple decides to have children, forcing the woman to take maternity leave, and forcing the man to take paternity leave... Woah, wait. No. That's not how it happens at all.
Women are stunted in their career path because of their potential choice to have children, for a start, because they might one day take maternity leave - not necessarily because they have taken it.
Can you explain why a woman has to choose between having a child and furthering her career, when a man does not have to make that choice?
This link does not not back up the final sentence of your last paragraph, if that was your intent. I mean, it's great that women aged 18-22 in metropolitan areas are outearning men aged 18-22 in metropolitan areas... But it does not mean that "Women who don't drop out of the work force on average make more then men".
Worth noting also that that WSJ article states the following:
"At every education level, from high-school dropouts to Ph.D.s, women continue to earn less than their male peers."
Is the WSJ credible enough?
Good lord. I didn't say that "nobody says [old boys' clubs are] a problem", I said that nobody says they are the entirety of the problem - which is the argument that your original report claims to refute. I wonder if there were any women on the committee that assembled that report.
Sorry I don't know how to break up the post to make the response easier to read.
Anyways as to maternity leave it is not really a cultural thing, it is that women are the ones that have babies, so their are real reasons that maternity leave exists and it is never forced, which is illegal because of the pregnancy discrimination act of 1978. As to the potential to take maternity leave, this has happened because women choose to drop out of the workforce. If it was because sometimes women take a very short maternity leave I doubt the wage gap would be as high, though it is almost impossible to test this.
Sorry I was guilty of some bias as I tend to see the world through the eyes of a 20 something living in a metropolitan area, but you are right that that doesn't apply to everyone. I still stand by the point that just because their is not necessarily a gender bias, just because there are factors that the report did not find. The factors could very well be gender bias, or they could just as easily be something else, but feminism often sees issues through a gendered light and assume that because their is a difference it must be due to some sort of bias, which is obviously faulty logic, although it is very hard to prove a gender bias exists as their are a lot of factors in hiring and pay decisions.
Also about "nobody" thinking that women's problems fall squarely in the boy's club type problems, I think it is very reckless and dishonest to make claims that try to speak for an entire group people. Words like nobody and everybody, don't really have a place in debates except for hyperbole or misleading people which is a very fine line especially in a medium such as the internet where tone, body language, and facial expressions are absent. Beside that, just because you ar enot making that argument does not mean a lot of people don't, and I have seen the argument applied to a lot of things by feminists.
"I wonder if there were any women on the committee that assembled that report"
As to this point I think you are attacking the study by speculation, you actually have no idea, but you are implying that their are not, which is not really fair. Also it does not effect the validity of the study.