Equal Pay Day is April Fool's Day

Hillary Clinton repeatedly introduces the Paycheck Fairness Act on Equal Pay Day (in 2008, it will be April 22). This distinguishes her from both Barack Obama and John McCain.

But Dr. Warren Farrell, author of Why Men Earn More, says both the Paycheck Fairness Act and Equal Pay Day rest on a false assumption: that the gap in male-female pay reflects discrimination. He feels, therefore, that they would more appropriately be introduced on April Fool's Day.

Equal Pay Day was originated by the National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE) in 1996. April 22 represents how long into 2008 a woman would allegedly have to work to earn as much as her male counterpart could have earned for the same work in 2007 alone.

Dr. Farrell, the only man ever elected three times to the Board of Directors of the National Organization for Women in New York City, and an organizer of protests against pay discrimination against women, changed his mind about the pay gap reflecting discrimination after he spent about a decade researching the subject. Instead, he discovered twenty-five measurable differences between men and women's work-life choices.

When each of these differences was accounted for (e.g., hours worked; willingness to do jobs that were hazardous, or jobs that required overnight travel; relocating; working evenings and weekends; or working in fields with more formulas and fewer people, like engineering), his best estimate was that the women out-earned the men.

Farrell sees opportunities for women in these twenty-five dimensfferences: "Twenty-five ways to higher pay." But, Farrell says, before anyone pursues the higher pay, she or he needs to understand that "The road to high pay is a toll road. The male-female pay gap can just as easily be seen as discrimination against men: the expectation men will pay more tolls to get higher pay." (Farrell says an Equal Tolls Act would rest on an equally false assumption, because women work more in the home.)

Farrell feels the pay gap can best be understood by understanding the division of labor once children arrive. For example, Farrell cites the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data that women who have never been married and never had children earn 117% of their male counterparts.

Farrell found that each of men's twenty-five decisions leads to men earning more than women, but each also leads to women having more balanced lives--balanced between work and family/friends/exercise, spiritual time and alone time. Dr. Farrell concludes, "most people find balanced lives to be happier. The real sexism is the assumption that only women should be learning from men. In fact, men should also be learning from women how to have more balanced lives. That's the challenge a candidate with courage would offer voters."

For more about Dr. Farrell on the pay gap, see http://www.warrenfarrell.com/