Warren Farrell

Warren Thomas Farrell (born June 26, 1943) is an American political scientist, activist, and author of seven books on men's and women's issues. Farrell initially came to prominence in the 1970s as a supporter of second wave feminism but has since become a leading figure of the men's movement. He served on the New York City Board of the National Organization for Women (NOW). Farrell advocates for "a gender liberation movement", with "both sexes walking a mile in each other's moccasins".

Farrell's books cover history, law, sociology and politics (The Myth of Male Power); couples' communication (Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say, and Role Mate to Soul Mate); economic and career issues (Why Men Earn More); child psychology and child custody (Father and Child Reunion); and teenage to adult psychology and socialization (Why Men Are The Way They Are, The Liberated Man, and The Boy Crisis).

Early life

Farrell was born in 1943. He is the eldest of three children born to an accountant father and a mother who struggled with her role as a housewife. His mother suffered from depression, particularly when she was not working, and died age 48 after a fall. He grew up in New Jersey, but spent time in Europe as a teenager, which taught him to challenge orthodoxies and to listen to others. Farrell graduated from Midland Park High School in New Jersey in 1961.

Farrell received a B.A. from Montclair State University in social sciences in 1965. As a college student, Farrell was a national vice-president of the Student-National Education Association, leading President Lyndon B. Johnson to invite him to the White House Conference on Education.

When he was a junior, Farrell met his future wife Ursula ("Ursie") at a convention. He encouraged her to speak up as she had stage fright, and the couple married in 1966. The same year, Farrell received an M.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles in political science.

Feminist years

A mathematician and IBM executive, Ursula offered to be the breadwinner for the family while Farrell did his doctorate in political science at New York University. Farrell became interested in feminism and joined the National Organization of Women in 1969. He quickly came to the conclusion that women could not be liberated until men were liberated from the constraints of their own ideas about masculinity. With NOW, he began a network of more than 200 men’s consciousness groups throughout the US. For three years, he served on the board of directors of the NYC branch of National Organization for Women (1971–74).

Farrell changed the topic of his PhD to reflect his interest in feminism, and men's need for change, graduating in 1974: his dissertation topic was "The political potential of the women's liberation movement as indicated by its effectiveness in changing men's attitude".

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Farrell conducting a "men's beauty contest" on the Mike Douglas Show with Alan Alda, Billy Davis Jr., and Marilyn McCoo, Template:Circa.

The same year, Farrell published The Liberated Man: written from a feminist perspective and based on this experiences with the consciousness raising groups, the book noted that men are also victimized by sexism. For example, he noted that men were forced into a role as breadwinner/provider and socialized to repress their emotions. In parallel to women's experience as "sex objects", Farrell labeled men's experience as "success objects", judged by their status and potential to earn money. As a tool for change, he provided guidelines and suggestions for consciousness raising groups in which men confront their sexist relationships. He also proposed gender-neutral language, including pronouns such as 'te' instead of she/he, which was critiqued by reviews in the New York Times by Larry McMurtry and John Leonard.

In 1974, Farrell left New York and his teaching at Rutgers when his wife became a White House Fellow and he moved with her to D.C. The couple separated in 1976 after ten years of marriage, and later divorced.

During this period, Farrell was frequently featured in the media, and mingled with other luminaries and media personalities, such as Gloria Steinem and Barbara Walters. He wrote op-eds for The New York Times, appeared on the Today show and The Phil Donahue Show, and was featured in People, Parade and the international media. He was known for creating audience participation role-reversal experiences to get both sexes "to walk a mile in the other's moccasins." In the men's beauty contest, men were invited to experience a woman's perspective, because "for women, life...is a beauty contest in which, willing or not, every women takes part, every day of her life". The male volunteers stripped, pose in swimming suits and were cat-called and criticized. In the "role-reversal date", on simulated dates, women judged "boys" as sex objects based on their appearance while the men viewed women as "success objects" in terms of their earning potential. In another activity, women were placed into rows based on their salaries, with the lowest earners branded as ‘losers’.

Farrell's advocacy of men's liberation led Carol Kleiman of the Chicago Tribune to call him ‘the Gloria Steinem of the men’s movement".However, Farrell became disenchanted with the feminist movement due to its stance on custody policy stances. NOW supported giving child custody to the primary caregiver, which was usually the mother. In a 1997 interview, Farrell stated: "Everything went well until the mid-seventies when NOW came out against the presumption of joint custody. I couldn't believe the people I thought were pioneers in equality were saying that women should have the first option to have children or not to have children — that children should not have equal rights to their dad." Farrell started to believe that feminists were more interested in power for women than in equality between the sexes.

Men's issues

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Farrell speaking at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship in London, 2023

Why Men Are the Way They Are

Farrell's books each contain personal introductions that describe his perspective on how aspects of public consciousness and his own personal development led to the book. By the mid-1980s, Farrell was writing that both the role-reversal exercises and the women and men's groups allowed him to hear women's increasing anger toward men, and also learn about men's feelings of being misrepresented. He wrote Why Men Are The Way They Are to answer women's questions about men in a way he hoped rang true for the men.

He distinguished between what he believed to be each sex's primary fantasies and primary needs, stating that "both sexes fell in love with members of the other sex who are the least capable of loving: women with men who are successful; men with women who are young and beautiful." He said that women feel disappointed because, "the qualities it takes to be successful at work are often in tension with the qualities it takes to be successful in love." He also said that men feel disappointed because, "a young and beautiful woman ('genetic celebrity') often learns more about receiving, not giving, while older and less-attractive women often learn more about giving and doing for others, which is more compatible with love."

The Myth of Male Power

In 1993, Farrell wrote The Myth of Male Power, in which he argued that the widespread perception of men having inordinate social and economic power is false, and that men are systematically disadvantaged in many ways. The book became a foundational text of the Men's Movement, and made Farrell one of its leading figures.

The Myth of Male Power was ardently challenged by some academic feminists, whose critique is that men earn more money, and that money is power. Farrell concurs that men earn more money, and that money is one form of power. However, Farrell also adds that "men often feel obligated to earn money someone else spends while they die sooner—and feeling obligated is not power." This perspective was to be more fully developed in Farrell's Why Men Earn More.

Susan Faludi argued that Farrell had effectively recanted his original position as part of a generalized backlash against feminism.

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say and Father and Child Reunion

The increase in divorces in the 1980s and 1990s turned Farrell's writing toward two issues: the poverty of couples' communication and children's loss of their father in child custody cases.

In Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say, Farrell asserts that couples often fail to use couples' communication outside of counseling if the person receiving criticism does not know how to make her or himself feel safe. Farrell develops a method called "Cinematic Immersion" to create that safety and overcome what he posits is humans' biological propensity to respond defensively to personal criticism.

To address children's loss of their father in child custody cases, Farrell wrote Father and Child Reunion, a meta-analysis of research about what is the optimal family arrangement for children of divorce. Father and Child Reunion's findings include some 26 ways in which children of divorce do better when three conditions prevail: equally-shared parenting (or joint custody); close parental proximity; and no bad-mouthing. His research for Father and Child Reunion provided the basis for his frequently appearing in the first decade of the 21st Century as an expert witness in child custody cases on the balance between mothers' and fathers' rights needed to create the optimal family arrangement for children of divorce.

Why Men Earn More

By the start of the 21st century, Farrell felt he had re-examined every substantial adult male–female issue except the pay gap (i.e., that men as a group tend to earn more money than women as a group). In Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap—and What Women Can Do About It, he documents 25 differences in men and women's work-life choices which, he argues, account for most or all of the pay gap more accurately than did claims of widespread discrimination against women. Farrell writes that men chose to earn more money, while each of women's choices prioritized having a more balanced life. These 25 differences allowed Farrell to offer women 25 ways to higher pay—and accompany each with their possible trade-offs. The trade-offs include working more hours and for more years; taking technical or more hazardous jobs; relocating overseas or traveling overnight. This led to considerable praise for Why Men Earn More as a career book for women.

Some of Farrell's findings in Why Men Earn More include his analysis of census bureau data that never-married women without children earn 13% more than their male counterparts, and that the gender pay gap is largely about married men with children who earn more due to their assuming more workplace obligations.

Themes woven throughout Why Men Earn More are the importance of assessing trade-offs; that "the road to high pay is a toll road;" the "Pay Paradox" (that "pay is about the power we forfeit to get the power of pay"); and, since men earn more, and women have more balanced lives, that men have more to learn from women than women do from men.

Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men?

Farrell's 2008 book, Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men?, is a debate book with feminist co-author James P. Sterba. Farrell felt gender studies in universities rarely incorporated the masculine gender except to demonize it. This book was Farrell's attempt to test whether a positive perspective about men would be allowed to be incorporated into universities' gender studies curriculum even if there were a feminist rebuttal. Farrell and Sterba debated 13 topics, from children's and fathers' rights, to the "Boy Crisis."

The Boy Crisis

Farrell co-authored the 2018 book The Boy Crisis with John Gray, identifying a global pattern in which boys are falling behind girls in several areas across more than 50 developed nations. The book discusses contributing factors such as educational underperformance, mental and physical health challenges, and lack of male role models, particularly in father-absent households. Farrell argues that "dad-deprivation" significantly impacts boys' outcomes and proposes a range of solutions including expanded vocational training, shared parenting post-divorce, and increased male teacher representation in early education. The book also includes chapters on non-pharmaceutical strategies for ADHD by John Gray.

Role Mate to Soul Mate

Farrell’s 2024 book, Role Mate to Soul Mate, outlines seven communication practices based on his decades of experience teaching couples workshops. The book explores ways to transform relationship challenges into opportunities for intimacy, with practical strategies for navigating criticism, conflict, and emotional disconnection. It also extends these methods beyond romantic relationships to improve communication with family, coworkers, and across political divides.

Critical reception

Conservative and antifeminist Phyllis Schlafly labeled Farrell a "feminist apologist", though praises his research for Father and Child Reunion. Kate Zernike of The Boston Globe refers to Farrell as "the sage of the men's movement". "

Personal life

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Farrell with Robert Redford, Sibylle Szaggars, and Liz Dowling

After what Farrell described as "twenty years of adventuresome singlehood", he married Liz Dowling in August 2002. He has two stepdaughters, and the couple resides in Mill Valley, California.

Farrell backed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election.

University teaching

Farrell has taught university level courses in five disciplines (psychology; women's studies; sociology; political science; gender and parenting issues). These were at the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego; the California School of Professional Psychology; in the Department of Women's Studies at San Diego State; at Brooklyn College; Georgetown University; American University, and Rutgers.

Other activities

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Farrell addressing world conference of spiritual leaders, 2010

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Farrell speaking on the boy crisis at the University of Toronto, November 16, 2012

During the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election, Farrell ran as a Democratic candidate, on a platform of fathers' rights, and received 626 votes. Farrell's current foci are conducting communication workshops, being an expert witness in child custody cases and researching a forthcoming book (working title The Boy Crisis), to be co-authored with John Gray. In 2010–11, he keynoted, along with Deepak Chopra, a world conference on spirituality (the Integral Spiritual Experience), addressing the evolution of love. He was then invited by the Center for World Spirituality to be one of their world leaders. Farrell speaks frequently on boys, men's and gender issues, including doing a keynote in 2016 for UK Male Psychology Conference.

In 2009, a call from the White House requesting Farrell to be an advisor to the White House Council on Women and Girls led to Farrell creating and chairing a commission to create a White House Council on Boys and Men. The multi-partisan commission consists of thirty-five authors and practitioners (e.g., John Gray, Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Michael Gurian, Michael Thompson, Bill Pollack, Leonard Sax) of boys' and men's issues. They have completed a study that defines five components to a "boys' crisis," which was submitted as a proposal for President Obama to create a White House Council on Boys and Men. In April 2015, the coalition went to Iowa to discuss their position with 2016 U.S. presidential candidates.

Farrell appeared in Cassie Jaye's 2016 documentary film about the men's movement, The Red Pill.

External links

• Template:Official
• Commission to Create a White House Council on Men and Boys