Divorces threw millions of women out of the Have-It-All class. But the woman who got divorced, more often 40 than 20, was tossed into the marketplace of men more addicted to two 20s than to one 40. Understandably she became angry.
In Stage I, reinforcing men’s addiction to the 20-year-old woman worked for her—the addiction made him agree to support her for a lifetime; the taboo on divorce made him stick to his agreement. When the taboo on divorce weakened and she was 40, his addiction to two 20s worked against her. She felt disposable. Divorce had altered the psychological relationship between men and women.
The more beautiful the woman was when she was younger, the more she had been treated like a celebrity—what I call a genetic celebrity—and therefore the more she felt like a has-been. It’s harder to lose something you’ve had than never to have it to begin with. As she became increasingly invisible, she felt increasingly disposable and increasingly angry.
Simultaneously, women who had never made it into the Have-It-All class—the New Royalty—
also felt like failures. In different ways, both groups of women felt rejected—by men. And therefore angry—at men.
The divorced woman with children felt doubly disposable. She was not just a woman, she was a package deal: a woman-with-children. I recall a male friend of mine coming back ecstatic from his date with Carol. A week later, he went to Carol’s home and she introduced him to her three children. When they all went on a ski weekend, he spent over $1,000 on the children. He knew he didn’t have to, but, “I didn’t want to be stingy so I paid for their ski-lift tickets, rooms for them separate from us, some of their meals, treats. . . .”
My friend was already supporting his former wife and two children. He feared becoming both a father of two families and a financial womb for two families. He feared becoming a man with four jobs.More precisely he feared doing each job inadequately. He soon backed off from the relationship. Carol felt hurt and never really spoke with him again. He felt disposable as a friend just because he couldn’t commit to being a wallet; she felt disposable as a marriage partner. In fact they were both victims of the post-divorce phenomenon I call “woman-as-a-package-deal”
(she was not just a woman but a woman-and-three-children). Had they understood how they were both victims of a setup, they could more easily have remained friends.
Divorce forced the middle-class woman who used to be able to take a job she liked more that
paid less to have to take a job she liked less that paid more. When feminism explained that women were segregated into the lower-paying and meaningless jobs, she felt devalued. Feminism was so powerful it blinded her to the men around her who were also segregated into different types of lower-paying, meaningless jobs: the short-order cook and dishwasher in her local coffee shop; the migrant workers who picked the vegetables for her table; the custodians and carwashers, the busboys and gas station attendants. . . . By being blinded to the whole picture—that when either sex had minimal skills they commanded minimal wages in different types of meaningless jobs—
women became increasingly angry.
Women interpreted men’s tendency to earn more for different work as an outcome of male dominance rather than male subservience: they did not see it as an outcome of male obligation—
obligation to go where the money was, not where fulfillment was. For him, following money was primary; following fulfillment, secondary. For him, divorce also created a change: he still followed money to support a family economically but without a family to support him emotionally.
Simultaneously, feminists focused on the fact that women as a whole earned less “for the same work.” And soon U.S. presidents—through to President Obama—were repeating the assertion as fact. They concluded the reason was discrimination. They ignored the thirteen reasons why women earned less that I discussed in The Myth of Male Power in 1993. In my opinion, the unwillingness to diagnose the problem left women only with “victim power” (“it’s discrimination, therefore I deserve affirmative action, a scholarship, or a man paying for me”) rather than real power: the ability to determine why she is earning less and an understanding of the trade-offs involved in earning more.
Feminists tend to equate high pay with power. In fact, the road to high pay is a toll road. That is, when I did research for a book published in 2005 titled Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap—and What Women Can Do About It, I identified twenty-five measurable differences between men and women’s work-life decisions. I discovered that each of men’s choices resulted in men earning more; that each of women’s choices resulted in women having more balanced lives—and therefore, usually happier lives. I discovered that for most people, the road to high pay is a toll road: the tolls of working more hours, traveling overnight and weekends, moving to undesirable locations, hazardous jobs, unsanitary jobs, night shifts and so on.
If the road to high pay is a toll road, then pay is not about power. There is, rather, a “pay paradox”—pay is about the power we forfeit to get the power of pay. However, what is forfeiting power for one person may be a pleasure for someone else. For some people, traveling more means forfeiting family time; for others, it means exploration. Empowerment comes from assessing the trade-offs to each person’s values at that stage in her or his life. It is having all the information needed to assess those trade-offs that gives us more control over our lives, which
usually results in a happier life, or real power. (Since the purpose of pay is a happier life, and a more balanced life is generally a happier life, maybe it is really men who should be learning from women about real power!)
3. Among Jobs Requiring Little Education, Those that Expose you to the Sleet and Heat Pay More Than Those that are Indoors and Neat (Fed Ex delivery vs. receptionist)
4. In Most Fields With Higher Pay, You Can’t Psychologically Check Out at The End of the Day (corporate attorney vs. librarian)
9. Updating Pays: Currency Begets Currency (sales engineer vs. French language scholar) 10. Also Choose Subfields with the “High Pay Formula” (surgeon vs. psychiatrist)
11. Work More Hours – And It Makes a Big Difference.
12. Have More Years of Experience–Especially in Their Current Occupation
13. Have More Years of Recent, Uninterrupted Experience with Their Current Employer 14. Work More Weeks During the Year
15. Are Absent Less Often From Work
16. Commute to Jobs that are Farther Away
17. Relocate—Especially to Undesirable Locations at the Company’s Behest 18. Travel Extensively On the Job
19. Take On Different Responsibilities Even When Their Titles Are the Same 20. Take On Bigger-Sized Responsibilities Even When Their Titles Are the Same 21. Require Less Security
22. Have More Relevant Training in their Current Occupation
23. Have Higher Career Goals to Begin With 24. Do More in-Depth Job Searches
25. Above All, Produce More
By calling the difference in pay “discrimination” and not explaining the reasons for the difference, women were left angry rather than empowered.
As female hurt and anger created an atmosphere that made it less safe for men to express their feelings, men became more passive-aggressive. Men increasingly felt that their only form of relationship power was not getting into one. Women labeled this a fear of commitment, accused men of a fear of intimacy, and began making masculinity virtually synonymous with evil: “Father Knows Best” became “Fathers Molest.” Women became “women who loved too much”; men became “men who harassed too much.” Women were labeled superwomen and men were labeled super-spoiled.