An unsatisfying explanation of the wage gap

By Martha E. Mangelsdorf, Globe Correspondent, 2/13/05

"Why Men Earn More, The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap - and What Women Can Do About It" is full of unrealized potential and is frustrating to read.

Author Warren Farrell makes some important points about factors that affect the difference between men's and women's average earnings for full-time work.

Unfortunately, Farrell's tendency to generalize and sometimes to take positions to extremes, coupled with his strong viewpoints, make his book less convincing, particularly the second half. By the end of "Why Men Earn More," the reader may have a hard time knowing how seriously to take this book.

Farrell's argument might be most simply summarized by his statement that when it comes to reasons women earn less than men, "it's marriage and children, stupid!"

In other words, according to Farrell, women and men often make different choices in the labor market after marriage and children enter the picture - men to earn more to support their families, women to spend more time at home, which of course affects their relative earnings.

If women want to close the pay gap, says Farrell, they can make the same trade-offs men traditionally have - working at hazardous or unpleasant jobs, choosing fields that offer higher pay rather than fulfillment, and being willing to relocate or to work long hours.

Farrell writes that "in male-dominated professions, traditional men tend to compete to be sure that women are cared for, mentored, and protected."

His factual support for that statement seems to rest primarily on a USA Today article about South African miners, a telephone interview Farrell did with a male Alaskan fish canner, and US soldier Jessica Lynch's time as a prisoner of war in Iraq.

In the second half of his book, Farrell suggests that men also are victims of unfair treatment. Corporate human resources seminars often unfairly stereotype them, he says; university liberal arts communities are "antimale;" men are discriminated against in jobs ranging from elementary school teacher to dental hygienist; federal government programs favor women; and men are victims of social worker bias, says Farrell.

Consider Farrell's take on domestic violence. He writes domestic violence has been "well-documented" as an "equal opportunity tragedy" that affects men and women equally as victims.

But according to FBI statistics, husbands in 2003 killed 4.7 times more wives than vice versa, and boyfriends killed 2.9 times more girlfriends than vice versa. Between 1996 and 2001, about three-quarters of the victims of violent crime in family relationships - including violence against children and the elderly - were female.

Similarly, according to estimates by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, women were the victims in about 85 percent of all cases of nonfatal violent crimes perpetrated by intimate partners in 2001.

That men who are victims of serious domestic violence are underserved by a system geared toward women might be an interesting point to make. But by insisting that men are victims of domestic violence "at every level of severity" as much as women, Farrell just makes himself much less credible.

E-Mail This Article