It is not outrageous that someone working 50 hours a week has a higher yearly salary than someone working 35 hours a week. And I think if you were in a job that carried a significant risk of death (coal miner, crab fisherman, police officer, fire fighter) you’d want to be paid more for being in a deadlier line of work.

I suspect there is an issue regarding discrimination over parenthood, in multiple ways (for example, did you know married men are paid more than single men?) but that doesn’t justify proliferating a wage gap myth, which, ultimately and ironically, could hurt women more than it helps.

Other authors, from Shakespeare to Bernard Shaw: http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/sgtheirl.html

Various translations of the Bible: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003572.html

I’d just like to point out that a simple Google search and the use of a good dictionary pulls up all this and much more.

2. Often used in reference to a singular noun made universal by every, any, no, etc., or applicable to one of either sex (= ‘he or she’).
See Jespersen Progress in Lang. §24.
1526 Pilgr. Perf. (W. de W. 1531) 163b, Yf..a psalme scape ony persone, or a lesson, or else yt they omyt one verse or twayne. 1535 FISHER Ways perf. Relig. ix. Wks. (1876) 383 He neuer forsaketh any creature vnlesse they before haue forsaken them selues. 1749 FIELDING Tom Jones VIII. xi, Every Body fell a laughing, as how could they help it. 1759 CHESTERFIELD Lett. IV. ccclv. 170 If a person is born of a..gloomy temper..they cannot help it. 1835 WHEWELL in Life (1881) 173 Nobody can deprive us of the Church, if they would. 1858 BAGEHOT Lit. Stud. (1879) II. 206 Nobody fancies for a moment that they are reading about anything beyond the pale of ordinary propriety. 1866 RUSKIN Crown Wild Olives §38 (1873) 44 Now, nobody does anything well that they cannot help doing. 1874 [see THEMSELVES 5].

You need to document this assertion with examples from actual writing throughout English history.

The irony of that entire time period is that the supposed “cure” for this type of female “illness” was more bed rest, leading to more sickness and stagnation of body, mind, spirit. Oh it’s so sickening to look back on and realize that women were actually prescribed more bed rest and more isolation and immobilization as a type of “cure”, something that was more of a “cause” than anything else.