It feels a but ridiculous that you are using “less work hours due to pregnancy and childcare” as your primary explanation for why women make less over multi-decades long career.

Women go on pregnancy leave for months. How can this explain less pay for years of working?

I thought it takes a man and a woman to make a child. In addition, in many countries, both the man and woman can take leave when they have a child.

These sorta points greatly weaken your argument. You using child care as an alternative explanation towards why woman may make less is likely a symptom of the bias women face in the job market.

Yes, like you stopping to peddle your bike…

A simple force diagram and application of newton’s 2nd law predicts the bike should accelerate to the left while it’s velocity is towards the right. This means the bike should slow down.

As a high school physics teacher, if this is the hill you’re willing to die on, then you neither understood the content in your high school physics class nor your university physics class. Newton’s 2nd law is generally accurate in most scenarios even without simplifications.

Saying “coincidence” is basically claiming there is no reason for an observed pattern. This is really more of a last resort when considering explanations for certain patterns, because it’s probably the weakest claim someone can make.

Generally, patterns are not coincidence because if an outcome is truly a result of randomness, then there is an extremely low chance that there would be a pattern.

Also, 12 is not the whole data set. The whole data set should include the people who weren’t hired during the hiring process. This is unknown to us.