book review

Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap — and What Women Can Do About It

Author: Warren Farrell, Ph.D.
Publisher: AMACOM Books
ISBN: 0-8144-7210-9

Reviewed by George F. McClure

The GAO released a study in October 2003 that showed that, over the past 20 years,  women had typically earned 20 percent less than men, after accounting for factors that affect earnings. Why would this be, and what can be done about it in individual situations?

These are the questions that Warren Farrell, Ph.D., a three-time board member of the National Organization for Women, undertakes to answer. He recalls that in the early 1970s he often wore a “59¢“ pin, to call attention to the pay gap that penalized women at the time. But later, he asked himself the question: “If an employer had to pay a man one dollar for the same work a woman would do for 59 cents, why would anyone hire a man?”

In this book, he controls for the variables in trying to understand the statistics of wage imbalance. His analysis brought out 39 fields in which the median pay of women was at least 5 percent higher than for men. These fields included sales engineers, engineering managers, aerospace engineers, financial analysts and legislators. Employers want to hire women and have them perform well. Some voiced a sense of personal failure when this did not happen.

The problem is with averages. Looking below the surface, he found that women tended to be promoted faster than men, to meet EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) goals, and after several promotions had considerably less seniority than their male peers at that level. Lack of seniority kept the pay lower. Women were less likely to accept field assignments, such as a two-year posting to Alaska, even though the assignment offered a boost in pay. In the military, there is equal pay for rank/rate and tenure, but the duties assigned to women may be less strenuous or hazardous than those assigned to men. Glass ceilings have been discussed as limiting the promotability of women, however, prior to age 40, women are 15 times more likely than men to become top executives at major corporations. He calls this trend the unpublicized "Women-First Club." Farrell also discusses glass cellars, where women, by selecting low-paid occupations, limit their earning potential. Women, he says, are more likely to be a restaurant hostess, meeting and seating people in pleasant surroundings, than a short-order cook working under stress in a hot environment, even though the cook earns more and, owing to turnover, the positions are often available and frequently part-time so children can be looked after.

Technology can make an occupation safer, cleaner and more convenient, increasing its desirability and drawing greater numbers of women into that occupation. The larger labor supply drives down the wages. Examples Farrell cites include typesetters, mail carriers and bakers. Technology drives up productivity, so that fewer bank tellers and cashiers are needed (with ATMs and self-service checkouts). Where the increased supply drives down wages, men — who are supporting families or who want to increase their attractiveness to women as top wage earners — leave the field. He postulates a headline never seen: “Men Make Occupations Cleaner and Safer So Women Can Replace Them.” His list of 20 occupations that pay the most includes engineering managers (10 percent are women), computer and information systems managers (30 percent women), aerospace engineers (9 percent women), electrical and electronics engineers (7 percent women), computer software engineers (22 percent women), and computer hardware engineers (11 percent women). Leading the list is lawyers (32 percent women, which includes patent attorneys).

More women enter medicine and law than engineering, but he thinks the media glamorize them more. There was L.A. Law, but no L.A. Engineering. ER did not stand for Engineering Room. There was no Marcus Welby, P.E. But women receive six levels of encouragement to enter technical fields, including better starting salaries than men, female-only government scholarships, and special grants for science programs at leading women’s colleges.

The statement that women with Ph.D.s in engineering earn less than men needs qualification, he says. Women are more likely to become biomedical engineers, whose pay is less than chemical engineers.

Women can select occupational subsets that are higher paid and can model their work habits on those who are most successful. He offers 25 choices or work habits that help achieve this, eleven of which are found in an article at his website www.warrenfarrell.com.

Women often select occupations with raising a family in mind. But choosing a technical occupation can enable a woman to earn in 15 years what she would earn as a schoolteacher in 30 years. For college educated women who never had children and work full time, Farrell notes that, in the age bracket 40-64, women earn 106 percent of what never-married men earn. For part-time workers (averaging 20 hours per week), women earn $1.10 for every dollar earned by men.

Examining the concept of comparable worth — trying to equate disparate occupations for pay, Farrell notes that the concept is flawed. He says his Ph.D. would be worth more on the market if it were in engineering. He cites singer-songwriter Alanis Morisette who, at age 22, made $22 million. Comparable worth would reduce her salary to about $22,000, he says, noting that she lacked a Ph.D., but her worth is determined by the market for her recordings.

Farrell has written before about male psychology and lack of male power. He writes that this book could be useful not only to women seeking career advice but also to employers and government agencies interested in understanding potential discrimination charges.

George McClure is chair of IEEE-USA's Communications Committee, a member of the IEEE-USA Career & Workforce Policy Committee, and technology policy editor for IEEE-USA Today’s Engineer. Comments may be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org. Opinions expressed are the author's.