How Women Shortchange Themselves February 20, 2005
by Rich Heintz
Every year, a new report documents the significant salary disparity between men and women. While women have made steady progress over the years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that women still earn only 80 cents for every dollar men make.
The implication is clear. Women, it is assumed, are victims of a chauvinistic work world that undervalues their contributions. But is that assumption correct?
No, contends a women’s rights advocate and author, who argues that women have mostly themselves – and their career choices – to blame for their plight.
In his new book, Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap – and What Women Can Do About It (Amacom Books, January 2005, $23), Warren Farrell argues that women are less likely than men to put money first when making career decisions.
Instead, women sacrifice fat paychecks in exchange for work that is flexible, less risky and more fulfilling. In other words, Farrell reasons, men make more because they are more likely to make personal sacrifices for the financial payoff. “The highway to high pay is often a toll road,” he quips.
Surprisingly, when Farrell factored in hours worked, areas of responsibility, and amount of uninterrupted experience, he discovered that men routinely earn less than women.
Women who would like to dismiss this book as just another volume of chauvinist rationalizations are confronted with Farrell’s credentials – he is the only male to be elected three times to the board of directors of NOW (National Organization of Women) in New York City.
Farrell is not basing his book on sexism but on years of research into the salary discrepancies between men and women.
He concedes that his NOW colleagues wanted to blame the plight of women’s pay on male bosses “blinded to the positive contributions women make to productivity.” While Farrell accepts that as an occasional cause of salary inequity, he decided to examine what happens “when women didn’t have men bosses, or even women bosses who might be adapting the rules of the patriarchy.”
Farrell was surprised by the findings. “When there was no boss to “hold women back,” women who owned their own businesses netted, at the time (1970s through 1990s) between 29% and 35% of what men netted. Today, women who own their own businesses net only 49% of their male counterparts’ net earnings,” Farrell reports. “This made me ask, if male bosses are to blame, why are women netting less than men when they are their own bosses?
“As I explored businesses owned by women versus men, I discovered that nowhere is the male-female difference in priorities clearer than in the difference between these businesses,” Farrell relates. “I discovered how running one’s own business tended either to follow what I came to call ‘the high-pay formula’ in exchange for lifestyle trade-offs or ‘the low-pay formula’ in exchange for lifestyle payoffs,”
Given this research, Farrell recommends that women reject their feelings of discrimination and take matters into their own hands by making better career decisions.
He offers the following advice:
Concentrate on career options in the hard sciences, not the social sciences. Engineers and computer scientists get paid more than teachers, journalists, and social workers. Female engineering managers earn an average annual salary of $83,000, but only 10 percent of professionals in the field are women.
Get hazard pay without the hazards. Women in the military have an 8-to-1 safety ratio over men (i.e., not a single woman in the Marines or Air Force has died in the War in Iraq). Women cab drivers routinely work safer shifts (and sometimes areas) than their male counterparts, as well as get higher tips, in spite of not necessarily helping with the baggage. For women willing to think big, there’s the lucrative option of starting up a company in a male-dominated industry such as construction. Thanks to laws governing federal contracts and woman-owned businesses, they’ll have government agencies, universities, and other organizations competing for their services.
Choose fields with higher financial and emotional risks. Male doctors and lawyers earn more than females in part because they are more likely to be in private practice. Risk is a huge reason venture capitalists earn between $100,000 and $300,000 a year – substantially more than supermarket cashiers who receive a regular paycheck and “check out” at the end of the day. About 91 percent of venture capitalists are men.
Put in the hours. People who work just ten hours more per week earn almost twice the pay.
Know the fields that pay women more than men. Female statisticians, for example, earn one third more than men, while female speech-language pathologists make 29 percent more. Farrell lists 39 fields that pay women at least 5 percent more than men.
Understand trends reshaping the workplace. Farrell notes that pharmacists now earn more than physicians. In addition, technology is transforming many male-dominated fields into female-friendly fields (like manufacturing and steelwork). “Muscle and heavy lifting are being replaced by the microchip and the mind,” Farrell points out.
Be willing to move – and to travel. Women account for half of today’s professionals, but only 18 percent of all employees transferred abroad, and only a similar percentage of frequent fliers. Women who move up are willing to both travel on the job and to relocate, especially overseas.
Consider a higher-paying specialty. A nurse, for example, who wishes to become a nurse anesthetist can make twice the pay of a general nurse. A nurse with a bit of wanderlust can earn much better income as a traveling nurse.
Farrell concedes that not everyone will buy his premise. They will prefer to embrace the victim mentality – and continue to seek the wrong remedies.
“Every complex problem has a simple solution – usually the wrong one,” Farrell points out. “Whether it’s one-week diets or men on white horses, the promise of magic keeps hope alive.”
The fault, he would argue, is not in our stars (or our paychecks) but in ourselves.
To learn more about Warren Farrell’s book, Why Men Earn More, visit amacombooks.org