Chapter 13: Women Producers

This entire book applies equally well to male and female producers, but for this section. Paraducers are interested in the bottom line predominantly (and preserving their power castes), and so will exploit any market opportunity to that end. I believe that this predilection is a major cause of female pay inequity, that society tells women that they are not worth as much as men, and so they work for less when they should not.

It has been documented that women earn less money than men in the same job with the same experience. Entire books have been written on the subject, including the causes, so I won’t douse you with more statistics or sociology.

My contribution to the solution is this. Producer women are similar to Producer men, and all the other advice in this book applies. However, women and men do have a different genetic composition, and they behave differently in similar situations, even in the same jobs. Ladies, the objective here is to find out not just how you are different, but how you are better, and exploit that to your benefit as a Producer. If you had an extra finger on each hand, I would tell you to exploit that. If you had a third eye in the back of your head (like my mother did), you would have some interesting Producer job options. You do have an extra chunk of DNA on that X chromosome, so put it to work.

In many industries, the predominant Producers are male. This has historical roots extending back to perhaps the dinosaurs or before. I worked at a newspaper that was uncomfortably patriarchal. The entire newsroom was composed of lead editors and reporters who had gray hair or no hair at all. The women were second tier reporters or editors or secretaries, but no higher. This was in the 1970’s, and the entire operation had the feeling of a 1940’s newspaper office out of some pulp fiction paperback. It even smelled bad.

Today, at that same newspaper, there are female editorial writers and such, but the entire operation still has that patriarchal feel, only they have expanded the definition of patriarchy to include women!

So there are women working there who have a better title, but the women below are in the same situation, lower pay and little upward mobility, until someone dies or retires. Even when women are represented in a company, it does not mean that they are well respected, and some women are complicit in holding other women down.

I would like to see women catch this Producer idea and turn up the heat. The very fact that the marketplace is overrun with male ideas and roles presents an excellent opportunity. All-male ideas become stale fast, and the world needs a fresh infusion of ideas on the Producer side, and I’m not talking about some new recipes. The greatest untapped natural resource in the world is the cranial tissue of women.

Evidence that this is true is seen in the fact that some traditionally male industries pay women more than men. Warren Farrell, in his book, “Why Men Earn More,” ^[40] tells us that female aerospace engineers actually earn 111% of what their male counterparts earn. For engineering managers, the figure is 108% of male earnings. Not all of this differential can be accounted for with the usual affirmative action arguments. Only 10% of engineering managers are women and an 8% pay differential is not going to change that soon.

The difference has to be performance. The few female engineers I have worked with and for were excellent. They have an attention to detail coupled with a personal attitude that is unparalleled in the world of male engineers. They are not thick-lensed geeks, either, but seem totally normal (whatever that means for an engineer). These women are Producers and are valued for that reason, and deserve the pay.

If this were 1950, I would be hesitant to encourage my daughters to dive into a male dominated industry. This is not 1950, however, and attitudes have changed, not just toward women, but toward Producers and their value to society. Today, Producers are valued, regardless of gender and a host of other differences one finds between people. A female Producer is just as valuable as a male, sometimes more, once she steps up and becomes a leader. Women should take advantage of that and move into the driver’s seat of industry. The characteristics of Producers that I have outlined must be observed, but beyond that, the sky’s the limit.

Many a man occupies a Paraducer’s seat of Mediocrity in many a corporation. These men are ripe for overthrow by women who can actually produce results without having to hire a consultant. The world is not fair, but it does in time reward women Producers, and that waiting time is dropping.

Women, use your strengths and individuality and become the Producers that our country needs, and if you put a few male Paraducers out of a job in the process, all the better. Somebody’s got to clean the bathrooms, and that’s not you.