Warren Farrell

We’ll know better after we finish our launching.

Warren Farrell

The interest was made out of the surfacing of the women’s movement in the late 60’s. I was teaching at Rutgers. I started having students in the class, roleplayed the women and leaders involved, played people that were protesting then, calling them lesbians and dikes, and bra burners and things like that. Fortunately, “lesbian” is a much more positive word now than it was in the late 60’s.

Warren Farrell

And so, I started to explain the perspectives of the women’s movement. Before, I knew that I was persuaded by my classes to change my doctoral dissertation topic to one that dealt with these issues on gender disparity. I did that, and then got elected to the board of the National Organization for Women in New York City, and started speaking all around the world of those issues.

Then, in the 70’s, I began to see a lot of divorces occur, and a lot of children left without their dads as a result of the divorces. The National Organization for Women now took a stand saying that if their mother wanted the children to be with them, they should have the right to say that. I said, “That’s not equality. This is completely opposed to what you believe in.” Also, without asking the more important question which “Is this best for the children?”

Warren Farrell

It turns out, what is best for the children is about an equal amount of time with mother and father after the divorce, but we didn’t have a super amount of research to support that at that point.

The research we did have was leading in that direction, and then, that led me to write a book called Father and Child Reunion, which was the result of the number of years of research that led me to be much more certain about something. It is that children after divorce do a lot better with approximately, an equal amount of time with mothers and fathers that don’t love each other, and mothers and fathers that they’re relatively close to each other, and mothers and fathers that do couples’ communication inconsistently after divorce.

Warren Farrell

The women’s movement, start to feel educated and make a move toward that women’s movement, kept supporting women while having the right to be their primary parent.

That led to my reminisce to make a distinction between the portions of the women’s movement that are extremely beneficial to women and to people in general versus the parts of the women’s movement that had stands that were not benefiting our children. And both men and women as if we were allies as opposed to as if we were competing.

Warren Farrell

I remember I was reading the men’s section of the women’s strive for equality. I was picking myself if men earn the dollar for each 79 cents that women make doing the same work or 59 cents.

I could start a firm with just women, and I would be producing products for 59 cents that other people will be selling for a dollar. And I could internationally build up a whole series of firms that were all female run, controlled, and etcetera then benefits the women’s movement from an office that was made.

I started picking that through, and said to myself, “Maybe there’s a deeper reason why there is this gap,” just that before I started taking off on this huge entrepreneurial adventure.

Warren Farrell

As I started looking more closely, I’ve started seeing that women who never had children and never been married in the 70’s earned more than men who had never had children and never been married.

Today, women who had never been married and never had children earn 117% more than men who have never had children and never been married. I said, “All right. There’s something about children and marriages, especially children that seem to be crucial and important.”

That led me to discover this.

Warren Farrell

When men and women got married, once the children arrive, the women, as a rule, tended to divide their labor between being involved and concerned with their children and their work. That led to putting fewer hours into work.

Women and men who have children and are married where the children are under five, 40% of them do not work outside their home. 40% work full-time outside the home and 20% work part-time.

Warren Farrell

Among the women who worked full-time, most of them cut back their work considerably to have more time with their children. They tend to give up long commutes and be closer to home and divide a lot of their working day and their weekends to be concerned with their children.

I started seeing women who didn’t do that and did very well. Some women had fathers who were with the children full time. Those women, they were moved more quickly in the workplace and eaten their male counterparts.

I started saying to myself here that there’s a lot more here to the pay gap than meets the eye and started looking more and more carefully.

Warren Farrell

Eventually, in the research why men earn more, I discovered that there were 25 distinct work-life choices that men and women make, and if they make the same decisions, women earn slightly more for the same work.

I identified those 25 areas, did the measurables to the best I can because there are overlaps. If a specific woman wants to earn more, there’s a formula for what she can do to do that.

Warren Farrell

One of those things, for example, is what they call the have it all moment, wanting to have a compelling career or be a great entrepreneur, but also having a husband, a good marriage, and children that are raised well. There’s a way to do that.

The way to do that is if you’re inclined in that direction, and you’re married and have children, be full time involved in the workplace but marry the type of man who’s interested in being home full-time with the children so that the children are raised effectively by a man.

If you have that demographic, those children do exceptionally well, and the women in that modality get promoted more quickly and earn more than their male counterparts.

That’s one option to stop gender disparity, and of course, not all women want that.

Warren Farrell

Yes.

I think into empathizing instead of reinforcing, which you say.

I remember when I was in third grade, and I looked in the history books and saw that every president was a male. Like, “Okay. Check that box.” That was interesting becoming the president of The United States at that point, and that “Oh, white male. Check that box.”

Warren Farrell

There is an inspiration or conversely for a woman, and lack of inspiration who are feeling of like, “The system was set-up against me.” if that is the woman’s desire to be a president of The United States. That can be an inhibiting factor by not having role models in upper-level position.

I think that is something inherently is a value by itself of having had Hillary Clinton be president, is that many women can say, “Okay. It is viable to do that.”

I think the same thing happens to men when in a different type of way. A man thinks of “I’m great with children, and it would be wonderful if I could be a full-time dad. If I would meet an attractive woman at a party and tell her my desire is to be a full-time dad, and she didn’t disappear before the next drink, and the person that replaced her was a reporter being interested in engineering me, but no woman is interested in dating me.”

Warren Farrell

Both sexes, when we look at people who are deviants from roles, find challenges in that deviation from roles.

I would ask that woman to use something different than using the word “injustice.” It’s because you could say it’s an injustice for a man not to get as much support to be a full-time dad, and you could say it’s an injustice for a woman who does not have as many role models to be in traditional positions of power.

Warren Farrell

Or you can understand that historically speaking, the world was not controlled by a patriarchy that made rules to benefit men at the expense of women, but rather the world was dominated by the need to survive.

The way most countries figured out the need to survive historically will say, “We survived best by having as many children as possible.” And women were more likely to be the ones being pregnant, and having the children.

Warren Farrell

The men would go out, and the women would select for providers and protectors, which very clearly, discriminated against men who were not prone to providing and protecting. And the men are chosen for women who are young and beautiful. These were two things we did to survive together.

But now, in developed countries, we don’t need to be so focused on survival, and technology had allowed women to do a lot of things that they’re easily able to do when they were farming and doing construction work, welding, and so on.

Warren Farrell

There’s a lot more flexibility now, and we have a luxury of having both sexes be able to not only participate in traditional roles of the other sex but also, when men participate in the roles women traditionally play, children do better than any other way. And conversely, when women participate in the roles that are traditional for men, women do an outstanding way. And so, the world is not about justice or injustice.

Warren Farrell

The dog playing is a little bit off.

Warren Farrell

Take a different attitude toward the pay gap in this area.

The pay gap is greater for people who want to do fulfilling work.

Warren Farrell

The reason for that is a large number of people want to be writers or actors or artists, and so we hear terms like “starving artists.”  Most actors in Los Angeles have the same name. It’s “waiter.”

My father warned me when I wanted to be a writer. He said, “That’s ridiculous. You can’t make a living as an author.”

If you want to do something that’s fulfilling, you probably will get paid less unless you work so hard not so become at the top of the highly competitive type group of people.

Warren Farrell

There are the opportunities out there for a woman who wants to earn as much or more as men, but each of those choices you will make is a tradeoff.

Warren Farrell

You get higher pay as a rule by pleasing a boss, by moving to where a company needs you even when you’re not; it’s in your best interest to do so as a family. And when you are more flexible to someone else’s needs, the boss of particular companies, you will tend to get paid more conversely, if you’re willing to take hazards job, but you don’t have much education.

You want to work as a garbage collector and get up at three in the morning in the cold, the rain, and snow. That person could have probably made more than a woman or man with an art history degree, who has a bachelor’s degree even though they have no education because we tend to need our garbage collector more than we need a new piece of art.