Why Women Earn Less
by Marty Nemko

On average, women are rated as slightly better managers than men. Also, women better understand the female consumer's mindset. That's important because women make most purchases.

So why are only 11% of Fortune 500 senior executives women?

The standard answer is "glass ceiling," a term that evokes the image of a cabal of top male executives scheming to preserve an old boy's club.

While vestiges of old boy hiring may remain, most top executives at Fortune 500 companies are too worried about the bottom line to let any old-boy cravings affect who they hire as senior executives.

The primary reason for the 11% figure is that men, on average, are willing to devote more time to their career than are women. And time it takes. A study conducted by The Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs, found that the average CEO works 58 hours per week. Fortune 500 CEOs likely work even more.

Unlike in typical media portrayals, male senior executives don't spend much time hang-gliding. In the real world, here's how it more often plays out, as reported to me by my many clients who are male senior executives. Their exercise is more likely to be on a treadmill while doing their professional reading. If they're married, when wife insists, "You need to take on more of the domestic chores and parenting!," he is likely to say something like, "I want to rise to the top, and you want me to, too. I like my work, and you like our lifestyle and that we can afford to pay for our kids to go to private school. That requires lots of evenings and weekends. I spend as much time with the family as I can."

Most women make different choices. Having been career coach to 2,000 professional clients, two-thirds female. More women than men prioritize a work/life balance, wanting more time for family, home, friends, and recreation. As a result, fewer women than men are willing to work 58+ hours a week. Fewer women, at least married women, than men want to take work home or do extensive after-work professional development activities during evenings and weekends.

Part of the reason most women want ample family time is their biological drive to have children and be the primary family caregiver. Feminist activists argue this is social conditioning by "the male hegemony." But if that were true, then why do women take on most family caregiving in almost every society from Iceland to New Guinea, in every era from ancient times to today, and in all political contexts from communist to capitalist? Women's desire to prioritize family caregiving is mainly a biological predisposition, not cultural brainwashing.

Some women argue that it's men's fault that women don't spend more time at work. For example, Career Journal senior correspondent Perri Capell wrote, "If more women had men at home doing for them what women traditionally do for men, they might be able to stay at the office longer." Fact is, many women don't do it for men. They do it for themselves. On average, it is women, more than men, who want to have children. So is it not unfair of them to insist that the men share heavily in the child rearing? It is the woman, on average, who cares more about having lots of time with children. If quantity of family time matters more to women, it is unfair for them to impose that value on their husbands. And regarding domestic chores, most men aren't as concerned about a tastefully decorated and sparkling clean home.

In the privacy of my office, many capable, highly educated women who, in public, mouth politically correct mantras decrying the paucity of women in the boardroom, admit that what they'd really like is to work part-time if at all, so they can have ample time for home, family, friends, etc. This is consistent with the September 2003 New York Times Magazine story that found that a majority even of Ivy-educated women did not work full time.

Dr. Warren Farrell, author of the forthcoming book, Why Men Earn More (Amacom, 2005) found that a key reason men earn more than women is length-of-hours worked. In addition to providing statistics, he interviewed a number of successful senior executive women. Each one stated that crucial to their success was their willingness to work longer than most women are. For example,

When I interviewed Lillian Vernon, (of Lillian Vernon Corporation), she said, "Many people who dream about their own businesses and don't have one, are not prepared to work that hard--to think about their job while they're getting dressed, showering, waiting for somebody-- to think of every minute as an opportunity."

Theresa Metty, senior VP at Motorola agreed, "Successful people don't see after-hour 'demands' as demands, but as opportunities. The opportunity to surprise, invent, create…"

A 2004 study by Catalyst, a women's advocacy organization, found that women aspire to senior executive positions at the same rate as men. But a woman (or a man) can't have it both ways. If she wants a moderate workweek, for the reasons I will outline below, she cannot fair-mindedly aspire to the boardroom.

Corporations, governments, and non-profits need plenty of good 20 to 40 hour-a-week workers, but not in the top spots. Here's why.

Imagine you were the CEO of a company and were considering two male employees for a senior position. Candidate A had--over her or his 20-year career--worked 50 to 60 hours a week, and in spare time, made great efforts to keep upgrading skills, while Candidate B worked 40 hours a week, and in spare time focused on family, home, friends, and recreation. You'd almost certainly hire Candidate A. Fact is, more men than women are like Candidate A. That, and not a sexist glass ceiling, is the main reason why women represent only 11% of senior executives in Fortune 500 companies.

But let's say that you, the CEO, did what feminist activists advocate: install a family-friendly workplace that prioritizes work-life balance. You might hire lots of people like Candidate B. If so, your company would likely go out of business.

Here's why. Your competitors would hire lots of Candidate A's. That would result not only in those senior executives--the company's more important people--being more productive, but their supervisees too. Dedicated, passionate leadership is infectious.

A company with such committed employees is an exciting, passion-filled place. The argument that working more than 40 hours a week is ineffective and leads to burnout is not true. What leads to burnout is meaningless or too difficult work in a passionless workplace, not additional hours of meaningful, doable work in a passionate environment. Some of the most alive people I know work long hours. The argument that working more than 40 hours a week leads to burnout is rhetoric unsupported by research. I believe the rhetoric is simply designed to sell work-life balance to employers. We all know how being around dedicated people makes us more energized, not less.

A workplace with long, hard-working passionate people results in the company's products being better or more cost-effective, which makes thousands of people -- the customers -- happier. Aren't you grateful when your home, TV, car, etc., is wonderful, reliable, and didn't cost too much? Creating excellent products, in turn, causes a company's profits to grow, which allows the company to invest in more innovation, provides money to the thousands of shareholders who entrusted their savings to the company, and increases the sense of pride and passion among the company's employees.

The media's headline message is, "Hire more women and make the workplaces more family-friendly. Stop demanding that executives work 50 to 60 hours a week. Be more like France that mandates a 35-hour average workweek." The media is far less eager to trumpet the fact that despite France having a better educated population and 35-hour work week, its unemployment rate is more than twice the US rate. Advocating "family-friendly, work-life balance" workplaces will likely create different headlines a few years later: "More jobs offshored to India. "More companies open new facilities in China." "Unemployment soars."

For the reasons stated at the outset, if I were a CEO, I would certainly want to hire women in senior positions, but only those with a proven track record of having put in long hours at work and in professional development, and who could be counted on to continue doing so. Those are the same criteria I would use to evaluate male candidates.

There would be plenty of room in my company for women and men who want to work a moderate workweek, but not at the top. I don't care whether my executives have a y chromosome, but I want their priority not to be work-life balance, but rather, helping my company to ethically develop the best products in the world.

Dr. Marty Nemko is a career and personal coach in Oakland, CA. 400+ of his published writings are free on www.martynemko.com.

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