说实话，我的收入比我那些女同事们高出不少。

when I took my job I negotiated a higher pay


This is literally the only thing you should pay attention to. It's not about gender or anything else - you asked, and they agreed. They could have negociated, but probably did not, or were happy to accept a position at your company for the agreed-upon salary.

I'm a man. I worked in a company a few years back, and in my team I sat next to and worked on the EXACT SAME tasks as the woman who sat next to me. She was younger than me. She had less education. She was my junior, in terms of time spent at the company.

One day HR accidentally sent me her payslip. She was earning DOUBLE my salary.

Why? Because she negotiated, and I didn't, (I couldn't afford to high-ball and risk not getting work since I was near broke, and taking care of my mom at the time of interviews).

Needless to say I moved to another job which had standardised salaries.

You're more than welcome to demand a pay cut. It's s stupid move that no one will thank you for, but it's your choice.

I read a book once about being a woman in the workplace. It strongly encourages us to talk about our pay and salary.

Compared to the dollar paid to white men for the same work in the US:
White women- .81
Black women- .61
Native American women- .57
Latinx women- .54

I don’t know how accurate these are in 2020, I think the book was from 2017. But reading this as an Afro-Latina who did the work of many people for many years hit me pretty hard. Later when I was filling in for an absent coworker I happened to run into everyone’s pay and realized that I was getting paid at least $2/hour less than everyone else, despite having more qualifications, education, and having been there longer than many of them.

A lot of this is because women tend to ask for raises less often. The reason I never asked was because my boss was always complaining to me about how the business was about to go under, and because I was passionate about the work, I worked harder, fighting to keep it afloat.

Employers like to perpetuate the myth that it’s wrong or even illegal to talk about pay. It is absolutely ethical to be open about.

The fact is, you do the same amount of work as these other people and they should be getting paid the same as you for it. Regardless of gender. Though it's naive to say it isn't a factor. There are so many reasons why and how this happens. If you don't do anything, you're complicit in a system that benefits you and hinders your coworkers. And when it comes down to it, complicity is harmful. You're essentially benefiting from their misfortune. I mean we're all slaves to capitalism here. The least we can do is hold each other up and try to get through this shit together. They have lives and goals and ppl they love and support, too.
You can either have the integrity to stand up for what's right or you can live with the guilt that you did nothing.

If the shoe were on the other foot, how would you feel if your coworker knew they made more and they decided to tell you? Would you feel grateful or angry? At whom?

I'll tell you that if it were me, and the ppl in charge were doing something wrong and i found out they were doing something wrong, I'd be pissed at them. But if i found out my coworker knew and did nothing, I'd be pissed at both.

Recruiter here.

Keep in mind that your salary is reflective of your market value, and is not directly tied to what your job is or how hard you work.

In the old days, we had more skilled workers than jobs. Which meant an employer could offer pretty much anything and someone would take the job. Today we have the opposite, we have many more jobs requiring skilled workers than skilled workers to fill them. This means salaries are dictated by a marketplace - i.e if what I offer is out of line with my competition, no one will work for me.

The issue is, like all markets, it fluctuates - Usually based on the economy, as well as demand for the skills in question.

What happens pretty naturally is that as I build a team over a long time, I end up with people being paid different amounts to do the same job. This can be a problem for companies as workers don’t often understand that their compensation is tied to their market value at the time of joining, not how hard they work once they’ve joined.

I think we basically end up with a situation where we can:

A) Pay employees individually assigned amounts negotiated at the beginning of their employment

B) Adjust employees salaries every time we hire a new staff member, based on what the market dictates at that time.

The issue with B, is that it’s all well and good putting salaries up. But what if we hire in a market downturn?We either have to reduce our existing staffs salaries, or pay everyone the highest amount we’ve ever hired at. If we go with the latter, we’ll have enormous overheads, and can easily be undercut by competition.

The reality is then, we either tie your salary to a fluctuating figure, or pay you a set amount determined at the time of joining, which may be different to your colleagues.