“If Employer X has two employees, one male and one female, doing the exact same job and with the same experience and qualifications, should the female expect equal pay?”
No, employee pay in the private sector is based on negotiation. You ALWAYS have and always had 2 or 3 or 10 or 20 MALE employees doing the same thing, with the same experience and qualifications, getting different — often vastly different — salaries due to better employee compensation negotiations by one employee over the other. Should we force all companies to pay all employees with the same experience and qualifications the same salary? Should we then lower the higher paid employees or force all companies to pay more to the lower paid ones? Or is this special privilege only to be extended to female employees in comparison to males?