Remember that silver-haired man who I introduced to you in an earlier column? When we ended the column, he was about to speak with me. He started “Listen, I’ve got a problem. In the past few years, our company has been sued for sex discrimination three times.”

“You must be pretty involved with your company.”

“How’s that?”

“You use ‘I’ and ‘our company’ interchangeably.”

“Oh,” he laughed, a tad embarrassed. “Well, the lawsuits are wreaking havoc on the company and me. They’re forcing us to put into legal fees what we should be putting into products and into raises for people who are working, not suing.

“And the other thing is, it’s destroying morale. And not just among the men. After I gave a speech about the importance of hiring women, even one of my female managers said, ‘I like what you’re saying about hiring women, but the higher up in the company I go, the more afraid I am to hire a woman for the company, ’cause all three of the lawsuits we’ve received have been from women. I’m afraid of being the one to hire somebody who will sue the company.’”

I switched to a softer, more of a tell-me-in-confidence tone. “Tell me…off the record. Are you paying women less than men?”

He thought long enough to make me assume the answer was “yes.” Then he surprised me. “No. In reality, no. But sometimes it appears that we do.”

“How so?”

“Sometimes we promote a woman faster than we would a man, giving her the same job title as a man, but she has fewer years with the company.”

“So you pay her less?”

“Yes. We’d pay anyone with fewer years less, but we move good women more quickly than we move good men—which is really discrimination against men, but it ends up looking like discrimination against women when we pay them less for less seniority.”

“Sort of ironic, huh?”

“Yeah. In fact, it’s worse than that. Last year, I asked who was willing to relocate to bail out two of our problem branches: one in Alaska and one in Kansas. No one volunteered. So I offered extra pay. Then one of the men says, ‘Maybe. I’ll have to check with my family.’ I ask if there are any women who want to go. The reaction is, ‘Are you kidding? To Alaska?’ Well, one single woman did perk up a bit, about there being a lot of single guys there, but then she unperked when she recalled that the cost of living is higher there. So I offered even more money to go to Alaska.”

I laugh, “I can see it coming. She still says no; he says yes, but now you’ve got a guy with the same job title earning much more than his female colleague.”

“Yep, nail on the head. It looks like clear-cut discrimination, until you realize that anyone with more years would have higher pay, and that anyone who took that job in Alaska would have higher pay.”

“So you want to be fair—even acknowledged for bending over backwards to promote women—but when you’re fair, the men get higher pay because they make more sacrifices, and even when you promote women faster, the men sometimes still get higher pay because they have more years of experience.”

“Yes,” he said. “And the HR people look at the raw data of men getting more pay and falsely conclude women are subject to discrimination. I feel this myself until I look more closely! Anyway, the result of no one understanding this is a lawsuit, an aggrieved woman, damaged morale, and even women managers who are afraid to hire women! Why don’t you write a book called what to do before you sue?”

I smile. From the impatience in the night custodian’s eyes, our delay isn’t giving him higher pay. As we’re “swept away,” I promise to give his situation some thought. That conversation was about fifteen years ago. I’ve given it some thought.

Both Liz and the male executive valued their female employees. Both credited their competence, intelligence, and effectiveness. Both respected their decisions to keep their work lives and personal lives in balance—in fact, Liz was envious of it. Yet both Liz and the corporate executive were grasping for a way to tell their female employees what they could do to receive higher pay.

Helping women achieve higher pay is a core goal of my book. But an even more important goal is helping women understand the trade-offs involved—and to determine whether higher pay is worth the trade-offs. In my research, I have uncovered 25 differences in the way women and men behave in the workplace. Taken together, these 25 differences lead to men receiving higher pay and women having better lives—or at least more balanced lives.

© 2005, Warren Farrell