Gender wage gaps are only partly explained by occupational choice

Quality and quantity of direct evidence for or against the claim — RCTs, systematic reviews, natural experiments, large cohort studies.

Within-occupation wage gaps persist even when men and women hold identical job titles, showing occupational sorting explains only part of the aggregate gap.

Whether the proposed mechanism is valid and established — does the how make sense, or are there fundamental flaws in the causal logic?

Occupational sorting operates alongside promotion-rate differences and unequal treatment within occupations, producing a wage gap through multiple concurrent channels rather than sorting alone.

Degree of agreement among domain experts and relevant scientific or policy bodies — depth and quality of consensus, not just majority opinion.

Labor economists broadly agree occupational choice is a partial, not complete, explanation for gender wage gaps.

Whether findings hold across independent studies, populations, and contexts — resistance to p-hacking and publication bias.

The partial-explanation finding replicates consistently across the US, UK, Canada, Nordic countries, and Germany.