I 100% agree that maternity leave is not a choice or a “vacation” and while there are laws in place to stop employers from discriminating against females for this reason- the bias is there and likely will be for the foreseeable future. I think including “gaps in employment” would be interesting data because men also have gaps in employment so if I ran a comparison between the pre-gap and post-gap pay for both men and women I would be able to tell if this effects their compensation. I will definitely put this into the analysis!