Far superior to his own excessively-condensed and popularised
Divided Labours: An Evolutionary View of Women at Work (Darwinism Today series), Kinglsey Browne's Biology at Work (2002) represents the definitive explanation for gender-gap in compensation. Browne explains:
1) The differences in life-choices underlying the pay-gap,
2) the biological sex-differences underlying these divergent life-choices; and
3) the evolutionary pressures which selected for these biological sex-differences.
The claim that the pay-gap is a consequence only of discrimination is demolished in a deluge of statistics. Men work longer hours, in less pleasant and more dangerous conditions and for a greater proportion of their adult lives. Given these and other factors, the gender-gap in compensation is inevitable even in the absence of discrimination (and even in the presence of mild 'reverse-discrimination').
Quite apart from his forays into the biology, Browne's checklist of factors directly contributing to the gender-gap in compensation is even more comprehensive that Warren Farrell's less academically-oriented but similarly meticulously-researched
Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap -- and What Women Can Do About It. For example, Browne produces evidence of greater male productivity (pp79-82), a factor omitted by Farrell.
Despite his non-biological background (Browne is a Professor of Law), Browne's explanation of both the proximate hormonal and ultimate evolutionary explanations for cognitive and temperamental sex differences is superior to many accounts by specialists. One minor quibble is the excessive attention devoted to cognitive differences in ability, which are probably of importance in accounting for occupational segregation in only a few specialist careers (e.g. sciences). Sex differences in temperament are of greater importance overall.
The gender-gap in compensation can largely be attributed to:
1) Higher levels of competitiveness and status-orientation among males
2) Higher levels of investment in offspring among females
Both these patterns are apparent throughout the mammalian order and likely evolved due to factors such as the steeper correlation between reproductive success and status among males and the uncertain paternity of offspring.
Political implications - Difference or Disadvantage?
Browne is to be praised for his intellectual courage. In his section on sexual harassment, he tackles such issues as women's use of their sexuality to gain advantages in the workplace and the lack of redress for men who are bullied in the workplace or subjected to 'hostile working environments' by homosexual workmates analogous to those successfully litigated against by female claimants.
Neither can Browne be accused of shirking from the politically incorrect implications of his findings. He concludes that, contrary to the prevailing ideology, women have greater choices available to them compared to men ("men are expected to work whether or not their wives 'choose' to" p139).
Similarly, he argues that "we have to talk about 'death-gaps', 'pleasantness gaps' and 'hours gaps', as well as 'wage-gaps'" (p90), given the sacrifices which men endure in terms of safety, working conditions and hours worked. Perhaps the advantage of higher pay is balanced by the hardships endured in earning it.
A feminist would counter that this fails to factor in women's 'unpaid labour'. However, as Browne observes (p169), given that single men do less housework than single women, it is doubtful that women's housework is done for the benefit of husbands or even for the joint benefit of the couple. Rather, it appears, women do more housework simply because they value housework more (or dislike it less).
In fact, according to data Browne cites, married men on average do only one hour less housework than unmarried men, hardly a benefit commensurate to the financial support husbands are legally obliged to provide for their wives. Rather than 'unpaid labour', women's housework starts to look more like 'overpaid laziness'.
Analogously, while feminists complain about disproportionate parental responsibilities, Browne observes that women decide to have children precisely because "these activities are widely perceived as part of the joys of parenthood" (p171). After all, women have children out of choice (unlike some fathers, who are denied any say in whether to abort a foetus, yet perversely still obliged to pay child support: see McCulley 1988; Kapp 1982).
Therefore, cleaning one's own house or looking after one's own children (as opposed to someone else's) can be viewed as a form of leisure pursuit - something one chooses to do out of its intrinsic rewards (like the 'work' involved in a hobby of, say, building model aeroplanes). As Jack Kammer observes, "How come you never hear a man complaining that his wife doesn't do her fair share of polishing the chrome on the Camaro?" (
If Men Have All the Power How Come Women Make the Rules: and other radical thoughts for men who want more fairness from women p68). A person no more deserves remuneration for cleaning their own house than they do for cleaning behind their ears in the bath.
Browne's Omission: The 'Spending Gap'
Viewing men's higher earnings as offset by the conditions endured in return for these wages, Browne concludes "what needs to be questioned is the notion that either sex is a victim" (p139). However, Browne fails to factor in one crucial factor.
Although men earn more than women, research from the marketing industry suggests that women dominate most areas of consumer spending (
Marketing to Women: How to Understand, Reach, and Increase Your Share of the World's Largest Market Segment;
Pocketbook Power: How to Reach the Hearts and Minds of Today's Most Coveted Consumer - Women). According to research conducted by the Women's Entertainment Network, the sales promotion agency Frankel & Co., and others, women make approximately 88% of retail purchases in the US (cited in
Pocketbook Power).
In addition to their own earnings (if they work at all), women typically spend a portion of the earnings of their husband, ex-husband or boyfriend. And, even if they don't spend it themselves, it may be spent on them (dinner-dates, jewellery etc.). From the social obligation to pay for dinner on the first date to the legal obligation to financially support an ex-wife several years after you have belatedly rid yourself of her, all the contemporary conventions of courtship seem predicated on the redistribution of money from men to women.
Although the fact that men are the victims of 90% of workplace fatalities clearly disadvantages men, the fact that men earn more than women does not necessarily disadvantage women - because they still get their hands on a large proportion of this income indirectly. Browne acknowledges 'death-gaps', 'pleasantness gaps' and 'hours gaps', as well as the ubiquitous 'pay gap', but not the 'spending gap'.
Browne's conclusion that neither sex is a victim because earnings compensate for working conditions is therefore inadequate. Women gain access to men's earnings without having to endure the conditions to earn them. (Farrell's treatment (
Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap -- and What Women Can Do About It p203), more comprehensive than Browne's in this respect, refers to 'Marrying up as invisible income'; see also the delightfully titled
Sex-Ploytation: How women use their bodies to extort money from men). As David Thomas (
Not Guilty: The Case in Defense of Men) has observed, "If... one class of person does all the work and another does all the spending, you do not have to be Karl Marx to conclude that the second of these two classes is the more privileged"
Browne's failure to attend to this factor is curious given his interest in, and obvious knowledge of, Evolutionary Psychology. In this field, a substantial literature has developed relating to hypergamy (women 'marrying up'), women's trading of sex for resources and the use of male social status as a mate-choice criteria by women (
Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind pp104-116).
However, given his courage in challenging a central politically-correct yet factually-incorrect contemporary dogma, Browne deserves to be commended and can hardly be faulted for lacking intellectual courage in failing to factor in this final but decisive factor.
Kapp M. (1982) 'Father's (Lack of) Right and Responsibilities in the Abortion Decision: An Examination of Legal-Ethical Implications'. Ohio Northem University Law Reuiew, 9,369-383
McCulley MG (1988). 'The male abortion: the putative father's right to terminate his interests in and obligations to the unborn child'. Journal of Law and Policy 7 (1): 1-55.
