The Case for Discrimination

34. LEVIN ON FEMINISM AND FREEDOM

MICHAEL LEVIN’S FEMINISM AND FREEDOM1 IS THE WORK OF a supremely courageous individual. Women’s liberation has so permeated the universities that any attack on this philosophy is bound to create personal difficulties for a male author.

Professor Levin denies the feminist thesis that men and women are exactly alike except for reproduction. On the face of it, this might not sound like much; indeed, it can only be considered the merest of common sense. However, an entire public policy agenda has been erected on either the denial, or neglect, of this elementary insight. Levin shows that the feminist program is entirely incompatible with freedom. Equal pay, affirmative action, nondiscrimination statutes, women’s studies departments, set-asides, quotas, equal opportunity laws, anti-harassment enactments—indeed, a whole panoply of modern public policy—are all intolerable attacks on human liberty.

Consider just the charge of sexism, the veritable tip of the iceberg: Levin gives the example of a male faculty member who asks a female graduate student for a date, or a foreman who invites one of his employees for coffee, and is refused. The professor or foreman takes the rejection with good grace, and does not in any way retaliate. Nevertheless, his mere invitation can subject him to charges of harassment. This has a chilling effect, to say the least, on our rights of free speech—to say nothing of normal social interaction.

I like this book, and very much so. I recommend it highly to all those who are concerned with human liberty and with the feminist attack on these principles.2 As in the nature of such things, however, I have found numerous details to which I can object. None of them invalidates his main thesis, but these small points will certainly be of interest to libertarians. Most of my disagreement stems from the fact that Levin is a conservative, not a libertarian, and while he is innovative and brilliant in coming to grips with the feminist attack on freedom, his refutations open him up to violations of liberty on numerous other grounds. So without any further ado, I consider those parts of the Levin volume with which I disagree.

1. The author states that “[p]rivate discrimination against women has been illegal since 1964,” in a context which implies he favors such legislation.3 Certainly, he does not criticize this state of affairs, while castigating almost everything else favored by feminists. From this, we can deduce that he is not opposed. If so, however, this is clearly counter to the dictates of morality, to say nothing of common sense. For surely the basic right of free association allows us the privilege of not only interacting with those we choose to, but also refusing to associate with those we wish to avoid. Yet, if private discrimination against women were legally prohibited, then organizations such as the Boy Scouts, Rotary, Lions, Moose, and Elks Clubs, and the Chamber of Commerce, to say nothing of the dozens of other men’s only luncheon, supper, and athletic clubs, would be outlawed. And what of male homosexuals? Their discrimination against women would have to be brought to an abrupt halt, to the utter denigration of their liberties. Strictly speaking, disallowing private discrimination against women would also rule out the possibility of separate men’s washrooms.

In addition, if private discrimination against men were by the same token also disallowed, then this would mean the end of women-only groups, such as the Y.W.C.A., feminist consciousness-raising groups, lesbian organizations, and large parts of the women’s liberation movement itself. (I’m tempted to say: Hey, maybe this isn’t such a bad idea after all; except for the fact that women, and men too, have a right to assemble together with those of their choice, and to exclude all others.)

Similarly, our author lists segregation, along with slavery and the lynch mob, as examples of wrongs perpetrated upon blacks.4 According to libertarian principles, however, people have a right to live in segregated housing (i.e., to refuse to sell to members of certain racial or ethnic groups), but certainly not to invade others as in the case of enslavement or lynching. Suppose we were to list the three “crimes” of enslavement, segregation, and lynching, and then to ask the man in the street “Which one does not belong with the others?” Is there any doubt he would pick segregation?

2. Levin accepts without demur the claim that “getting everyone to drive on the same side of the road [is] a paradigm coordination problem solved by state action.”5 But surely private road owners were able to get everyone to drive on the same side of the road when property rights in highways were allowed, and would be able to do so again should we ever move toward road privatization again. And not only could private enterprise get everyone to drive on the same side of the road, the government cannot—at least to judge by our stupendous traffic fatality rate.6

3. While Levin is sound on the question of forced equality for women, he leaves something to be desired in regard to what I would consider the identical issue of forced equality for racial minorities. He states that “unlike the case for racial quotas, which is merely unsound, the case for gender quotas is an intellectual scandal.” In his view, there are relevant differences between the two. At one juncture, he points to the innate differences between the sexes. But are there no innate differences between the races? And even if it could be shown that there are innate differences between the sexes, but not the races, it would still not follow that this is a relevant moral distinction. The libertarian non-aggression principle, for example, would still apply in both cases.7

Elsewhere he claims it as a relevant difference that blacks have been more heavily victimized by violence (slavery, segregation, lynching) than have women.8 We have already dealt with the segregation issue; but what of the feminist rejoinder that women have been victimized by rape? To this, Levin cavalierly notes that “there is no evidence that rape adversely affects female acquisition of job skills.” One might think the reason there is no evidence is that the causal chain is so obvious it never occurred to anyone to go out and find evidence on this matter. Rape is so savage and bestial an attack that it cannot help but have a negative impact on all aspects of life. For that matter, is there any evidence of the fact that lynching or slavery “adversely affects black acquisition of job skills?” Furthermore, there are no blacks being lynched or enslaved today, while women, unfortunately, are still being raped.9

In any case, what is the relevance of past victimization to present rights? Surely, we all have an equal right not to be aggressed against at present, and no other rights than that, regardless of the amount of victimization suffered by our forebears in the past.

4. Although Levin does not go so far as to advocate preventive incarceration for all eighteen-year-old males in order to reduce the crime rate (indeed, he repudiates this), he does claim the legitimacy of preventative coercion on the part of the state “only in emergencies.”10 The forces of law and order, he claims, need not wait until an actual crime is committed; the threat thereof, or the opening stages (like the pointing of a gun), will suffice.11 But the libertarian moral code legitimizes force only as a reaction to prior force—one may not assault another who has engaged in no coercive activities simply on the assumption that he may do so later. Preventive coercion is thus never justified, emergency or not.

5. Levin objects to governmentally enforced quotas on the ground that “rights originally promised on the basis of seniority are subordinated to the need to ‘preserve the gains’ of affirmative action.”12 But these seniority “rights” were gained through an illegitimate process of their own; that is, through coercive unionism.13 It is an interesting speculative venture to choose between two such illegitimate rights, but it is ultimately meaningless. Suppose you had to judge which of two persons was the rightful owner of a wallet. One gave as his reason that he is 5’8” tall and wears a red coat, while the other justified his claim on the ground that he weighs 160 lbs. and wears a blue coat. All you could do is throw up your hands in dismay.

6. States Levin: “The common law will not dispossess the current holders of land that has been transferred in good faith for a number of generations, despite proof from a claimant that the land was stolen from his ancestors; too much honest labor is now part of the land.”14 This is a particularly infuriating argument, because the author does not even openly agree with the assessment; instead, he hides behind a declarative sentence concerning the common law. We are forced to deduce from the fact that he does not object to it—that he indeed cites it to buttress his own argument—that he actually favors it.

But there is no statute of limitations on justice.15 If my grandfather stole your grandfather’s watch, it is unjust if I am allowed to keep it, no matter how many times my father may have polished it and otherwise cared for it. It is stolen property which never should have passed from my grandfather to my father, or from him to me. And the same analysis applies to land, or any other good.

7. Not content with attacking the feminists, Levin also launches into a critique of right-wing opponents of women’s liberation—for being insufficiently radical. This is all well and good; anyone who publishes anything, on whatever side, must bear the scrutiny of all subsequent writers. Furthermore, most of his shots hit their mark. But there are several places where he is off target. First, Levin upbraids Thomas Sowell (without directly quoting him), for what he calls Sowell’s implicit acceptance of the view “that quotas ‘work’ if they increase the number of blacks and women in high-level positions.” But all Sowell says, according to Levin, is that “affirmative action does not work because it rewards well-credentialed blacks and women whom firms are eager to hire without helping poorly-credentialed blacks.”16 By this quote, though, Sowell does not necessarily indicate that he has accepted the feminist premise. All he is doing is claiming that even given the viability of this feminist premise, affirmative action is still not an effective means toward that end.17 In other words, Sowell finds that the women’s liberation movement is acting inconsistently with its own goal in championing affirmative action. I find nothing wrong with that.

     Second, Levin reprimands Carl Hoffman (again, without directly quoting him) for accepting “wholly environmental explanations of sex differences in economic behavior.” Specifically, Levin complains that Hoffman “objects to comparable worth because it penalizes employers who ‘had nothing to do with producing … female inhibition.’”18 But why is this equivalent to accepting a wholly environmental explanation of sex differences? All Hoffman19 is saying is that employers are punished, even though they are entirely innocent of whatever it is that is causing female inhibition. As I read this, it is entirely consistent with the denial of a wholly environmental explanation.

     Third, Levin admonishes Ma Block’s favorite and only son. Once again, his usual scholarly scrupulousness deserts him, and he fails to quote me directly. What is his complaint? “Walter Block explains sex differences in economic characteristics in terms of a ‘fear of success’ which besets girls in high school.”20 In fact, however, I was not offering this as an explanation of my own, but rather citing a whole host of feminist writers to this effect.21 In any case, why is this necessarily equivalent to a wholly environmental explanation? Couldn’t it be that this fear of success stems from biological antecedents?

8. The author of Feminism and Freedom accepts without criticism the myth that government can be productive, in the ordinary economic sense.22 This is unremarkable in a conservative; no better can be expected. However, he does take the view that “people should not be forced to finance what they abhor”;23 from this, one might expect him to reason that if people are forced to do so, the result cannot be productive from their point of view (otherwise they would have financed the projects voluntarily), and that since government revenues are derived through force, the state cannot be productive. Alas, the very opposite of this conclusion was drawn by him.

9. Levin opines that as long as all large firms are forced to engage in affirmative action, none need fear loss of profits. General Motors need not worry about transmitting costs to the consumer in the form of higher prices as long as Ford and Chrysler must do the same. But what about small firms, not covered by this pernicious legislation? Can they not take market share away from all the large but encumbered firms?

10. Libertarians hold that discrimination should be allowed, on any basis, in the private sector, but not at all, on any basis, in the public sector. The reasoning is that if people are forced to pay taxes without discrimination, then they should be allowed to seize whatever benefits they see in government operation, also without discrimination. But the types of discrimination envisaged in this principle include far more than what is usually supposed. In addition to the usual race, sex, ethnicity, etc., it also includes everything else conceivable: strength, agility, intelligence, endurance, speed, and so on. The point is that if both the weak and the strong are forced to support the state, on a non-discriminatory basis, then the state must deal with each in the same manner.

       Consider the case of the fireman with which Levin begins his book. By establishing physical requirements for fire fighters, the government is discriminating on behalf of the strong and agile—those, in other words, who are best suited to fighting fires and rescuing fire victims. This is entirely illegitimate, however, in that the state is discriminating against the elderly, those in wheelchairs, the weak, the blind, etc.; in a word, against all those unable to function adequately as firemen. Naturally, of course, without such discrimination, public-sector fire protection would he fatally compromised. But that is of no concern at all to the libertarian. Indeed, this state of affairs would be positively welcomed! For it would undermine the present nationalization of this vital service, and tend to place it back in private hands, where it belongs.

11. The same goes for education, despite Levin’s chapters 7 through 9, where he deals with such matters. How is it warranted for the state to hold entrance exams for public universities, when these discriminate in favor of the most intellectually able? Ignorant and stupid people also pay the taxes used for these institutions of learning. They deserve representation at the finest public universities, and on a proportional basis; or at least on one that does not discriminate on any basis whatsoever. Of course, all entrance exams have to discriminate on some basis, so the argument in effect calls for the cessation of all entrance exams for public universities. Remember, we are searching for a moral way for goods and services that have been taken from people against their will to be ethically returned to them. And surely it cannot be on any basis irrelevant to the manner in which such things were taken.

     Levin, in sharp contrast, avers that government is justified in supplying public education, provided that it teaches children good citizenship and steers clear of controversy. He does so despite his recognition that “public education forces parents to send their children to … school,” that people obviously abhor being forced to do things against their will, and that “people should not be forced to finance what they abhor.”24 Even his restriction upon the state not to engage in controversy is logically flawed. He holds that “the state can legitimately press literacy, numeracy, and basic factual information on children” and that “the public schools could teach industriousness and honesty, but they could not take sides in controversies.25 But not all taxpayers favor honesty; some are thieves. Not all favor industriousness; some are lazy. Not all favor literacy; some are illiterate.26

12. Our author favors wage-control legislation. He says that “the question … [of] whether women … receive the same pay as men for the same work … was settled in 1963 when the Equal Pay Act made it illegal to pay a woman less than a man for the same job.”27 Well, this may well be settled in the minds of some advocates of government intervention, but there are still those of us who yearn for a world of economic freedom, one of contract, not status. If an employer wishes to pay a man twice as much for doing the same exact work as a woman, that is his natural right. We could interpret the extra pay as a gift; or we could determine that the jobs are not really exactly equal, if only because the employer is more comfortable with the man in his employ than with the woman. But these scenarios are beside the point. The bottom line is that, in a free society, there should be no restrictions whatsoever on the free contractual rights of consenting adults. If an employer can find a woman willing to accept half the salary of a man for the same job, it is their right to agree to a wage contract which stipulates this.28

13. Perhaps Levin’s most serious breach of the libertarian legal code involves his defense of conscription. In his view, “if the all-volunteer force is unable to attract enough men, an obvious solution is [a] return to all-male conscription.”29 But an obvious moral alternative is to raise pay scales until enough men are willing to supply their labor for this enterprise, assuming in the first place it is a legitimate one.

14. He also opposes a woman’s right to abortion on the “fundamental Kantian rule against initiating aggression.”30 He rejects the familiar Judith Jarvin Thomson analogy of someone who wakes up to find another person attached to himself, dependent upon the use of his kidneys. Levin rejects this on the grounds that “the person who withdraws his assistance is not completely responsible for the dependency on him of the person who is about to die, while the mother is completely responsible for the dependency of her fetus on her.”31 But this will not do. Surely the victim of rape is in no way responsible for her fetus’s dependency on her. And just as surely all fetuses, whether the result of rape or not, have equal rights with one another.32

To sum up: I have praised the book to the skies, and then, that being my nature, have registered quite a few disagreements with it. But it should be obvious that I recommend reading this book: It is the only exhaustive, in-depth, utter refutation of the feminist argument presently in existence. Its positive contributions are great, and its flaws do not detract from its central thesis. On the contrary, they are peripheral, although interesting, issues.

_____________________

Journal of Libertarian Studies 10, no. 1 (Fall 1991).

33 Michael Levin, Feminism and Freedom (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1987).

34 For a review of Levin’s book that focuses entirely on its positive elements, see my review in Nomos 7, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 25–26.

35 Levin, Feminism and Freedom, p. 4. See also ibid., p. 282, for another failure to object to the legal prohibition of private discrimination.

36 Ibid., p. 113.

37 Ibid., p. 82.

38 For a demonstration that the market would be able to reduce the accident, fatality, and injury rates on the highways, see Walter Block, “Free Market Transportation: Denationalizing the Roads,” Journal of Libertarian Studies 3, no. 2 (Summer 1979): 208–32; idem, “Theories of Highway Safety,” Transportation Research Record 912 (1983); Murray N. Rothbard, For a New Liberty (New York: Macmillan, 1983), pp. 202–18.

39 Levin, Feminism and Freedom, pp. 104, 41–42.

40 Ibid., p. 113.

41 This, of course, is largely a matter of there being altogether too much public property and not enough private property (it is no accident that more women are raped in Central Park than in Disney World). It is also traceable to the fact that the institutions ostensibly set up to eradicate rape (the police, the courts) are unfortunately in the intrinsically inefficient public sector.

42 Levin, Feminism and Freedom, p. 106.

43 Murray N. Rothbard, Ethics of Liberty (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1982).

44 Levin, Feminism and Freedom, p. 112.

45 W.H. Hutt, The Strike-Threat System (New York: Arlington House, 1973); Emerson P. Schmidt, Union Power and the Public Interest (Los Angeles: Nash, 1973).

46 Levin, Feminism and Freedom, p. 115.

47 Rothbard, Ethics of Liberty, pp. 63–68. For a debate on this issue between the present author on the one hand, and Milton Friedman, David Friedman, and Paul Heyne on the other, see Walter Block, Geoffrey Brennan, and Kenneth Elzinga, eds, Morality of the Market: Religious and Economic Perspectives (Vancouver, British Columbia: The Fraser Institute, 1985), pp. 490–510.

48 Levin, Feminism and Freedom, p. 118.

49 Thomas Sowell, “Weber, Bakke, and the Presuppositions of Affirmative Action,” in Walter Block and Michael Walker, eds., Discrimination, Affirmative Action, and Equal Opportunity (Vancouver, British Columbia: Fraser Institute, 1982), pp. 37–63.

50 Levin, Feminism and Freedom, p. 143.

51 Actually, reference is presumably being made to Carl Hoffman and John Reed, “When is Imbalance Not Discrimination,” in Block and Walker, Discrimination, Affirmative Action, and Equal Opportunity, pp. 187–216.

52 Levin, Feminism and Freedom, p. 144.

53 Since Levin does not quote me, I cannot be sure of the exact context, but I assume his reference is to footnote 21 of “Economic Intervention, Discrimination, and Unforeseen Consequences,” chapter 18 in this book.. This footnote stretches on for three pages, wherein I cite numerous feminist writers who give dramatic testimonial to the fear of success of many, many accomplished women. My motivation for reviewing this Literature was similar to that of Sowell: I wanted to catch the women’s liberationists in a contradiction. On the one hand, they explain the female-male wage gap in terms of employer sexism; on the other hand, they testify to the fear of success of many women. They utterly fail even to consider that the latter could be at least part of the cause of the wage gap.

54 Levin, Feminism and Freedom, p. 120.

55 Ibid., p. 111.

56 Ibid., pp. 194–95, 111.

57 Ibid., pp. 194–95.

58 Levin also champions academic freedom, and does not even restrict this “right” to private institutions. For a critique of his views concerning academic freedom, see Walter Block, Defending the Undefendable (New York: Fleet Press, 1976), pp. 54–57. He also favors the legal prohibition of blackmail (Levin, p. 261). For an alternative view, see Block, Defending the Undefendable, pp. 44–49; Block, “Trading Money for Silence,” University of Hawaii Law Review 8, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 57–73; and Block and David Gordon, “Extortion and the Exercise of Free Speech Rights: A Reply to Professors Posner, Epstein, Nozick, and Lindgren,” Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 19, no. 1 (November 1985): 37–54.

59 Levin, Feminism and Freedom, p. 131.

60 An employer who engages in this practice on a large scale is of course risking bankruptcy, but that is an entirely different matter.

61 Levin, Feminism and Freedom, p. 229.

62 Too bad he does not take this fundamental Kantian or libertarian axiom more seriously, especially in the cases of taxation, public enterprise, and conscription.

63 Levin, Feminism and Freedom, p. 288.

64 For a defense of fetus eviction, not abortion, see Walter Block, “Abortion, Woman and Fetus: Rights in Conflict?” Reason, April 1978, pp. 18–25.

• 1Philip Blumstein and Pepper Schwartz, American Couples: Money, Work, Sex (New York: William Morrow, 1983).
• 2See lewrockwell.com.
• 3See lewrockwell.com.
• 4“The Evil of Term Limits,” lewrockwell.com.
• 5See Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy—The God That Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy, and the Natural Order (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2001).
• 6See, e.g., Thomas Sowell, Race and Culture: A Worldview (New York: Basic Books, 1994).
• 7James Buchanan, Cost & Choice (Chicago: Markham Publishing, 1969), especially pp. 47–48; G.F. Thirlby, “Subjective Theory of Value and Accounting Cost,” Economica 13 (February 1946): 32–49; Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, 3rd ed. (Chicago: Regnery, 1963), pp. 242, 395.
• 8A female/male income ratio of 485 can be derived from Income Distributions by Size in Canada, 1979, Statistics Canada, Catalogue 13-207 (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 1979), p. 99.
• 9Ratna Ray, Women in the Labour Force: Facts and Figures, Catalogue L 38-30/1977-2 (Ottawa: Department of Labour, Women’s Bureau, 1977), page i. Other economic studies of interest in this regard include Alan S. Blinder, “Wage Discrimination: Reduced Form and Structural Estimates,” Journal of Human Resources 8 (1973): 436–55; Morley Gunderson “Male-Female Wage Differentials and the Impact of Equal Pay Legislation,” Review of Economics and Statistics 57 (1975): 462–70; Morley Gunderson, “Work Patterns,” in Opportunity for Choice: A Goal for Women in Canada, ed. G. Cook (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 1976).
• 10The average age of all employed Canadian men was 37 years in 1980. This placed the typical man in the highest male earnings age bracket (35–44 years old). The average age of all employed Canadian women was 34 years in 1980. This placed the typical woman in the fourth highest male earnings age bracket (25–34 years old). See The Labour Force, Statistics Canada, Catalogue 71-001, (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 1980), page 75; and Income Distributions by Size in Canada, 1979, Statistics Canada, Catalogue 13-207 (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 1979), pp. 104–09.
• 11Occupational segregation such as shown in the table below cannot properly be interpreted as the result of employer discrimination. After all, the employer cannot hire a nurse as a doctor, nor a person with secretarial training as an engineer or accountant.
• 12In 1978, the percentage of female Canadian union members was 28.7 percent; males comprised 71.3 percent of the membership. Source: Corporations & Labour Unions Returns Act, Part II, Labour Unions, Statistics Canada, Catalogue 71-202, p. 41. On the question of male/female productivity differentials, see Jacob Mincer and Solomon Polachek, “Family Investments in Human Capital: Earnings of Women,” Journal of Political Economy 82, no. 2, part 2 (March 1974): 76–108.
• 13In 1980, 94.1 percent of employed Canadian males worked full time, 5.9 percent worked part time; 76.2 percent of employed Canadian females worked full time, 23.8 percent worked part time. In 1979, 72.9 percent of employed Canadian males worked 50–52 weeks, 27.1 percent worked 1–49 weeks; 60.1 percent of Canadian females worked 50–52 weeks, 39.9 percent worked 1–49 weeks. Source: The Labour Force, Statistics Canada, December 1980, p. 105, Catalogue 71-001; Income Distributions by Size in Canada, 1979, Statistics Canada, Catalogue 13-207, p. 112.
• 14These figures are derived from computations based on data cited for elementary school teachers’ earnings and percentages of teachers by sex: Salaries and Qualifications of Teachers in Public, Elementary & Secondary Schools, 1979–80, Statistics Canada, Catalogue 81-202, p. 25; university teachers’ earnings and percentages of university teachers by sex: Teachers in Universities, 1978–1979, Statistics Canada, Catalogue 81–241, p. 57. Note that while we have corrected the female/male income ratio for several phenomena not related to discrimination, a still more accurate assessment would have to normalize for all of these variables, together, and include other variables such as continuity of employment, earned degrees, labor force participation, location, industrial concentration, public or private employment, productivity, seniority, as well as such imponderables as motivation, “stick-to-it-iveness,” resourcefulness, ambition, expectations, etc.
• 15Thomas Sowell, Affirmative Action: Reconsidered (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1975), pp. 23–34.
• 16Jesse Bernard, Academic Women (University Park: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1964), pp. 220–26; Jesse Bernard, The Future of Motherhood (New York: Penguin Books, 1974), pp. 165–70; Bryan and Boring, American Psychologist 2 (January 1947): 18; Lee Rainwater, And the Poor Get Children (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1960), pp. 67–69; Wayne R. Bartz and Richard A. Rasor, Surviving With Kids (San Luis Obispo, Calif.: Impact, 1978), p. 147; Martin Meissner, “Sexual Division of Labour and Inequality: Labour and Leisure,” in Women in Canada, pp. 166–74; Nancy Chodorow, “Being and Doing: A Cross Cultural Examination of the Socialization of Males and Females,” in Women in Sexist Society, ed. Vivian Gornick and Barbara K. Moran (New York: Basic Books, 1971), pp. 183–84; Roslyn S. Willett, “Working in ‘A Man’s World’: The Woman Executive,” in Women in Sexist Society, p. 368; Jean Tepperman, “Two Jobs: Women Who Work in Factories,” in Sisterhood is Powerful, ed. Robin Morgan (New York: Random House, 1970), pp. 115, 121.
• 17Gail C.A. Cook, “Opportunity for Choice: A Criterion,” in Opportunity for Choice: A Goal for Women in Canada, ed. Gail C.A. Cook (Ottawa: Statistics Canada and C.D. Howe Research Institute), Catalogue IC 23-15/1976, p. 4; Gail C.A. Cook and Mary Eberts, “Policies Affecting Work,” in Opportunity for Choice, p. 145; Richard A. Lester, Antibias Regulations of Universities (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974), p. 39; Willett, “Working in ‘A Man’s World’,” p. 368; Pat Mainardi, “The Politics of Housework,” in Sisterhood Is Powerful, pp. 447–54; Jesse Bernard, The Future of Motherhood, pp. 157–65; Kathryn E. Walker, “Time Used by Husbands for Household Work,” Family Economics Review (June 1970): 8–10; M. Meisner, E.W. Humphries, S.M. Meis, and W.J. Scheu, “No Exit for Wives: Sexual Division of Labour and the Cumulation of Household Demands,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 12 (1975): 424–39.
• 18Barbara B. Reagan, “Two Supply Curves for Economists? Implications of Mobility and Career Attachment of Women,” American Economic Review 65, no. 2 (1975): 102; Jacquelyn S. Crawford, Women in Middle Management (Ridgewood, N.J.: Forkner, 1977), p. 63.
• 19E.W. Burgess and Paul Wallin, Engagement and Marriage (New York: Lippincott, 1953), pp. 614, 618; and Reagan, “Two Supply Curves,” p. 104. See also Beth Neimi, “The Female-Male Differential in Unemployment Rates,” Industrial and Labour Relations Review 27, no. 3 (April 1974): 331–50.
• 20Alan E. Bayer, “Marriage Plans and Educational Aspirations,” American Journal of Sociology 75 (1969): 239–44; Reagan, “Two Supply Curves,” p. 103; Bernard, The Future of Motherhood, pp. 91, 151, 181; Jean Tepperman, “Two Jobs,” p. 123; Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Dell, 1974), p. 31; Meg Luxton, More Than a Labour of Love: Three Generations of Women’s Work in the Home (Toronto: Women’s Educational Press, 1980), p. 16; Margaret Luxton, “Urban Communes and Co-ops in Toronto,” (M. Phil. dissertation, University of Toronto, 1973), cited in Luxton, More Than a Labour of Love; Ann Oakley, Women’s Work: The Housewife Past and Present (New York: Vintage Books, 1976); Eli Zaretsky, Capitalism, The Family, and Personal Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), p. 17; Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), p. 482.
• 21Let us imagine an experiment. We offer a large number of employed married couples the following option: jobs in city A, where the husband will earn $200,000 per year and the wife $150,000, or in city B, where the wife will earn $200,000 per year, and the husband $150,000. (The type of employment and the amenities of the cities are assumed to be identical in each case.) How many of the husbands would prefer city B? How many wives would prefer city A? Although there is only casual evidence on this, since such an experiment has not yet been done, one may speculate that there will be more wives who will prefer city A than there will be husbands who will prefer city B. The motivations behind these choices may vary. Some husbands may feel “less of a man” if their wives earn more than they do; others may feel it is just “not fitting” that their incomes should be lower; some wives may feel less damaged psychologically from earning less than their spouses; others may subscribe to the societal pressures which teach, at a young age, that “nice girls don’t outcompete boys.” But whatever the reason, there is abundant anecdotal evidence that many women have great psychological and other personal difficulties in competing with men, and are thus, when married, more likely than men to purposefully keep their earnings below those of their spouses—with important implications for the low female/male earnings ratios for married people.
• 22Unfortunately, only the “married” and “total” columns are widely published in official Canadian Statistics. To say the least, this gives rather a biased account of the true state of the female/male earnings ratio, and its basic cause (marital status and its widely diverging effects on male and female earnings).
• 23Not only does marriage have asymmetrical effects on earnings by sex, but it is reasonable to believe that so does “living together” or “cohabitation”—and for similar reasons. Moreover, this category has become more statistically significant in recent years, though actual data are lacking. Table 3, in distinguishing between the ever married and the never married, cannot separate those who have ever lived together—whether married or unmarried—from those who have never lived together. If cohabitation as well as ever-married status could be controlled for, one would thus expect the female/male ratio to be higher than 992. There is also, however, a reason for believing that 992 may be somewhat of an overestimate of the “true” female/male earnings ratio: never-married females are older than never-married males (46.2 years vs. 43.7 years old), have more schooling (10.9 vs. 9.3 years), work more weeks (45.6 vs. 42.3 weeks), and work on a part-time basis to a lesser degree (10.6 percent vs. 11.8 percent). (All figures based on calculations made from data presented by Kuch and Haessel; see Table 3 for full citation.)
• 24Some may argue that private discriminatory behavior is immoral and ought to be prohibited by force of law. Others may hold that, while discrimination is a negative characteristic, each individual is nevertheless entitled to make whatever decision suits his conscience—whether in commercial dealings, employment practices, housing decisions, or personal relations—provided only that he not commit fraud upon, or initiate aggression against, minority group members. Whatever the solution to this philosophical question, both sides may perhaps take comfort from one of the findings in Block and Walker, Discrimination, Affirmative Action, and Equal Opportunity: the tendency of the marketplace to financially penalize those who indulge in discriminatory practices, and thus to reduce, over time, the scope of this activity.
• 25There would appear to be numerous criteria upon which discrimination has, or is alleged to have, taken place, and upon which quotas, affirmative action, or preferential treatment are now demanded. Some of the grounds include (1) obesity: see “Obese Are Victims of Bias: Professor,” Toronto Globe & Mail (August 5, 1980), p. 13; (2) blindness: see “Group for Blind Suggests Job Quota,” Toronto Globe & Mail (August 2l, 1980), p. 1, and “Blind Woman and Guide Dog Win Rights Fight,” Vancouver Sun (August 18, 1980), p. 8; (3) residence: see “Stop Provinces Reserving Jobs for Residents, Rights Chief Says,” Toronto Globe & Mail (June 4, 1980), p. 10; (4) “reverse” discrimination: see “Barring White in Native Class Is Ruled Illegal,” Toronto Globe & Mail (February 13, 1980), which tells of an Alberta Human Rights Commission finding against the University of Calgary for discriminating against a non-Indian woman by denying her admission to a special course specifically set up for native peoples; (5) ugliness: see “More to an Interview than Meets the Eye,” Toronto Globe & Mail (July 19, 1980), p. F3, which shows that persons of “unattractive appearance” (and even sometimes persons of beauty) are discriminated against in hiring practices; (6) political beliefs: see “They’re Biting the Hand that Won’t Feed Them,” Toronto Globe & Mail (August 9, 1980), p. 8, which tells of a Prince Edward Island Provincial Human Rights Commission finding that a public employee had been wrongfully dismissed for his political beliefs; (7) hirsuteness: see “Supreme Court Refuses a Motion to Force Grocery Clerk to Shave,” Toronto Globe & Mail (February 10, 1980), which tells of a Winnipeg employer who could not legally compel his grocery clerk to either shave his beard, work nights “out of the sight of customers,” or fire him.
• 26The situation with regard to discriminatory practices on the part of the government is a unique matter. It cannot be argued, as it could in the private case, that, no matter how morally reprehensible discrimination is, at least in the market sector it is done by an individual in his own name and with his own money.
• 27Although many people interpret prejudice or discriminatory behavior as a willingness to engage in physical aggression against a despised person or group, this interpretation is about as far away as it is possible to get from a clear understanding. On the contrary, a sharp distinction must be made between refusing to interact at all with a person, and threatening physical abuse against him. The former is all that is done by a hermit, although on a larger scale; and if it is no crime to refuse to deal with all of humanity, then it might be argued that it can scarcely be a rights violation to avoid dealing with only some people.
• 28Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, p. 109.
• 29Toronto Globe & Mail (April 14, 1980), p. 6. See also Toronto Globe & Mail (January 25, 1980).
• 30See “Drea Tells Firm to Stop Questions” and the editorial “Wearing Nothing but a Seat Belt,” both in Toronto Globe & Mail (July 31, 1980), pp. 5, 6.
• 31These agencies include the Federal Reserve Board, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, and the National Credit Union Administration.
• 32Wall Street Journal (June 22, 1978). On age bias, see also Toronto Globe & Mail (February 18, 1980), p. 5.
• 33Most women, on the other hand, even executives, do not consider housework demeaning.
• 34In the first of these columns, “A Silver Lining in Drug Prohibition,” I noted that real criminals who might not otherwise be caught are sometimes jailed for engaging in the drug trade, which they have every right to do. But fewer murderers and rapists at large is surely a good thing. In the second of these columns, “A Silver Lining in Unjust Executions,” I observed that those executed for murders for which they are innocent (a travesty of justice if ever there was one) were sometimes guilty of committing other capital crimes for which they were not charged. Thus, a critique of the death penalty was not as powerful as otherwise thought. In the third, I tried to clarify my position on this issue vis-à-vis several objections that had been made of it.
• 35In the first of these columns, “A Silver Lining in Drug Prohibition,” I noted that real criminals who might not otherwise be caught are sometimes jailed for engaging in the drug trade, which they have every right to do. But fewer murderers and rapists at large is surely a good thing. In the second of these columns, “A Silver Lining in Unjust Executions,” I observed that those executed for murders for which they are innocent (a travesty of justice if ever there was one) were sometimes guilty of committing other capital crimes for which they were not charged. Thus, a critique of the death penalty was not as powerful as otherwise thought. In the third, I tried to clarify my position on this issue vis-à-vis several objections that had been made of it.
• 36In order for there to be a silver lining, there has to be an evil, and, also, some good must come out of it. I am already on record in taking the position that term limits are highly problematic. I did so on grounds blazed by Professor Hans Hoppe. His argument is based on time preference: other things equal, the longer a politician is in office, the more of a long-run viewpoint he can afford to take. If he can leave the office to his children (e.g., a monarchy), he will act even more responsibly; he doesn’t want to kill the golden goose, otherwise there will be nothing left for his progeny to exploit.
• 37In order for there to be a silver lining, there has to be an evil, and, also, some good must come out of it. I am already on record in taking the position that term limits are highly problematic. I did so on grounds blazed by Professor Hans Hoppe. His argument is based on time preference: other things equal, the longer a politician is in office, the more of a long-run viewpoint he can afford to take. If he can leave the office to his children (e.g., a monarchy), he will act even more responsibly; he doesn’t want to kill the golden goose, otherwise there will be nothing left for his progeny to exploit.
• 38There is no one who has done more to combat this pernicious fallacy than Tom Sowell. But he needs all the help he can get on this mission. It is incumbent upon all men of good will to help him in this regard. And one way that we can do so is to recognize one of the side order benefits of that otherwise insidious policy of term limits: that it disproportionately penalizes female politicians.
• 39Another difficulty is that “equal opportunity” is a subjective, not an objective, phenomenon. Women do not come equipped with a little tag which indicates their productivity, once and for all, in a manner from which no dissent is possible. (Nor, of course, do men.) Productivity, rather, is a continually changing phenomenon which varies with, for example, education, intelligence, age, experience, presence or absence of complementary factors of production, which can only be partially quantified, as well as with such factors as motivation and determination, which are completely incapable of exact measurement.
• 40This is not to say it is completely implausible to support the position that EPFEW laws are required. There is ample evidence to suggest that male and female compensation and promotion rates differ. For example, the overall female/male wage ratio for all employees in Canada was 485 in 1979. That is, females, on average, earned only 48.5 percent as much as males. The question is whether or not this reflects an inherent problem in the labor market. The proponents of EPFEW apparently think so. But it is an error to conclude, from such information, that the state of affairs is a result of conscious and hostile human design (i.e., employer discrimination against women), that this is disgraceful and unfair, and that therefore a determined effort on the part of government is required to “right these wrongs.” Consider, in this regard, the statement of no less an authority than Dr. Ratna Ray, Director, Women’s Bureau, Labour Canada:
• 41Economic self-sufficiency for women? “We’ve only just begun!” Despite sporadic progress, there’s a long way to go. Canadian employers, economic planners, and decision-makers should take a long hard look at these figures. Because they tell a shocking story, a story of shortsightedness and languorous efforts towards the utilization of human resources in the workforce. Our publication comes hard on the heels of the National Council of Welfare’s report Women and Poverty which concludes that “After fifty years or so of unpaid, faithful service a woman’s only reward is likely to be poverty.”
• 42Men and women differ in a wide range of economic, educational, and sociological characteristics, each of which exerts an independent effect, raising expected male incomes and reducing expected female incomes. For example, working men tend to be older than women, more highly concentrated in the higher-paying professions, more heavily unionized in the highly skilled and legislatively protected blue-collar industries, and tend to work, to a greater degree, on a full-time, full-year basis.
• 43Men and women differ in a wide range of economic, educational, and sociological characteristics, each of which exerts an independent effect, raising expected male incomes and reducing expected female incomes. For example, working men tend to be older than women, more highly concentrated in the higher-paying professions, more heavily unionized in the highly skilled and legislatively protected blue-collar industries, and tend to work, to a greater degree, on a full-time, full-year basis.
• 44Men and women differ in a wide range of economic, educational, and sociological characteristics, each of which exerts an independent effect, raising expected male incomes and reducing expected female incomes. For example, working men tend to be older than women, more highly concentrated in the higher-paying professions, more heavily unionized in the highly skilled and legislatively protected blue-collar industries, and tend to work, to a greater degree, on a full-time, full-year basis.
• 45Men and women differ in a wide range of economic, educational, and sociological characteristics, each of which exerts an independent effect, raising expected male incomes and reducing expected female incomes. For example, working men tend to be older than women, more highly concentrated in the higher-paying professions, more heavily unionized in the highly skilled and legislatively protected blue-collar industries, and tend to work, to a greater degree, on a full-time, full-year basis.
• 46Not unexpectedly, when female/male income comparisons have been corrected for these factors, the ratio tends to rise. If working women are assumed to retain their own income levels, but to take on the same age pattern as working men, the female/male income ratio rises from 485 to 521; if we assume that females are divided among elementary and university teaching in the same manner as males, the ratio increases from 743 to 814; if the female/male income ratio is corrected in a similar manner for full-year or part-year status, it increases from 528 to 575. See Table l.
• 47As important as these variables are, the strongest determinant of the so-called male/female earnings “gap” is none of these things. Rather, it is marital status, and the asymmetric effects of marriage on male and female earnings. That is, marriage increases male earnings, and reduces female earnings.
• 48This occurs for many reasons. Wives, to a greater degree than husbands, take on a higher and disproportionate share of child care and the housework and homemaker tasks. They are more likely to quit their jobs if their partner receives a better job elsewhere, to interrupt their careers for domestic reasons, to place their homes and families ahead of their jobs or professions, and even to purposefully attempt to keep their earnings below that of their spouses. It is impossible to quantify the effects of such phenomena in driving a wedge between married male and female incomes, but there is little doubt that they are important.
• 49This occurs for many reasons. Wives, to a greater degree than husbands, take on a higher and disproportionate share of child care and the housework and homemaker tasks. They are more likely to quit their jobs if their partner receives a better job elsewhere, to interrupt their careers for domestic reasons, to place their homes and families ahead of their jobs or professions, and even to purposefully attempt to keep their earnings below that of their spouses. It is impossible to quantify the effects of such phenomena in driving a wedge between married male and female incomes, but there is little doubt that they are important.
• 50This occurs for many reasons. Wives, to a greater degree than husbands, take on a higher and disproportionate share of child care and the housework and homemaker tasks. They are more likely to quit their jobs if their partner receives a better job elsewhere, to interrupt their careers for domestic reasons, to place their homes and families ahead of their jobs or professions, and even to purposefully attempt to keep their earnings below that of their spouses. It is impossible to quantify the effects of such phenomena in driving a wedge between married male and female incomes, but there is little doubt that they are important.
• 51This occurs for many reasons. Wives, to a greater degree than husbands, take on a higher and disproportionate share of child care and the housework and homemaker tasks. They are more likely to quit their jobs if their partner receives a better job elsewhere, to interrupt their careers for domestic reasons, to place their homes and families ahead of their jobs or professions, and even to purposefully attempt to keep their earnings below that of their spouses. It is impossible to quantify the effects of such phenomena in driving a wedge between married male and female incomes, but there is little doubt that they are important.
• 52This occurs for many reasons. Wives, to a greater degree than husbands, take on a higher and disproportionate share of child care and the housework and homemaker tasks. They are more likely to quit their jobs if their partner receives a better job elsewhere, to interrupt their careers for domestic reasons, to place their homes and families ahead of their jobs or professions, and even to purposefully attempt to keep their earnings below that of their spouses. It is impossible to quantify the effects of such phenomena in driving a wedge between married male and female incomes, but there is little doubt that they are important.
• 53This occurs for many reasons. Wives, to a greater degree than husbands, take on a higher and disproportionate share of child care and the housework and homemaker tasks. They are more likely to quit their jobs if their partner receives a better job elsewhere, to interrupt their careers for domestic reasons, to place their homes and families ahead of their jobs or professions, and even to purposefully attempt to keep their earnings below that of their spouses. It is impossible to quantify the effects of such phenomena in driving a wedge between married male and female incomes, but there is little doubt that they are important.
• 54() Married and Total figures are published in each year’s Income Distribution by Size (Statistics Canada, Catalogue 13-207). Single and Other averages are from unpublished tables. Survey of Consumer Finances, Statistics Canada.
• 55In order to remedy this situation, we turn to Table 3, which includes only wages and salaries and specifically excludes all other income. As a test of the hypothesis that marital status has widely asymmetrical effects on earnings by sex, Table 3 is an improvement over Table 2 in yet another way: it collapses the categories of “married” and “other” into “ever-married,” which, as the name implies, includes all people who were ever-married, regardless of the marital status they now occupy. That is, it compares people presently married, divorced, widowed, or separated, with those who were never married in their entire lives. Table 3 thus furnishes a comparison of people who have been touched in some way by the institution of marriage with those who have not.
• 56Given the great difficulties, social costs, and unintended negative consequences of proportional representation requirements, quotas, and other similar prescriptions based on retrospective results, and given the market’s ability to reduce discriminatory behavior—in the absence of legislation which retards this process—a case is made, throughout this book, against the employment of affirmative action programs in the private sector. We also noted above that the incentive system operating in the private sector may not work in the public sector. Accordingly, we must now assess the case for equal opportunity programs (based on quotas and proportional representation) in the field of public employment.
• 57Discrimination in the public sector, moreover, is considered unjust and immoral by many. The funds which pay for government employment come from all citizens—including minority members. For anyone to be excluded from a public job because of race, sex, national origin, sexual preference, skin color, or any other such criteria, after being forced to pay for this very same unemployment through coercive taxes, is nothing more than a cleverly disguised, but particularly insidious, form of exploitation.
• 58Discrimination in the public sector, moreover, is considered unjust and immoral by many. The funds which pay for government employment come from all citizens—including minority members. For anyone to be excluded from a public job because of race, sex, national origin, sexual preference, skin color, or any other such criteria, after being forced to pay for this very same unemployment through coercive taxes, is nothing more than a cleverly disguised, but particularly insidious, form of exploitation.
• 59The difficulty is that quotas are unjust. The beneficiaries (in those rare cases where someone actually benefits) are the wrong people: the 18- to 21-year-olds, applying for their first jobs, who never bore the brunt of past employment discrimination, by definition. The real victims are those who would have liked to have been police officers, firefighters, letter carriers, and civil servants in the past but were not even considered, even though fully qualified, because of their race or sex. But these people, for the most part, are already either settled in their present jobs or retired from the labor force. If anything, monetary settlements might seem a preferable alternative.
• 60Insurance is an industry dedicated to pooling and spreading risk. While health, injury, or sickness of any one person is beyond prediction, actuarial tables have been established for the probability of such occurrences in the aggregate. Because of this, insurance companies can charge premiums to large numbers of people and underwrite the costs of the unfortunate few; all customers pay a relatively small amount, in effect, for the security that should they be struck by calamity, they or their loved ones would be protected from great expenses, and thus would remain financially secure.
• 61A case in point is the recent Canadian Human Rights Commission regulation condemning discrimination between men and women with regard to pension plans. It is a plain actuarial fact—established through years of insurance experience—that women tend to live longer than men. With sexual discrimination prohibited, equal pension premiums would render men more profitable customers to insurance companies, as on average they will collect benefits for fewer years. The Canadian Human Rights Commission prohibition will therefore tend to result in (1) the encouragement of male over female labor (men will now be cheaper to employ); (2) the segregation of the labor force by sex (so that no one employer would have to make different contributions on this basis); (3) the withdrawal of employers, especially small ones, from pension plans altogether; and/or (4) the migration of companies to areas which do not prohibit discrimination in pension premium payments on the basis of sex. Needless to say, any of these eventualities would effectively discourage workers from pooling risks concerning retirement income.
• 62Another case in point is the order of the Ontario Consumer and Commercial Relations Ministry to the Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company. The ministry enjoined the insurance company from questioning its clients about their convictions on alcohol or sex-related offences, on whether they are usually restless, sad, or sweaty at night, and on other personal subjects.
• 63There are also affirmative action guidelines approved by several U.S. Bank Regulatory agencies prohibiting discrimination in borrowing. These bar credit application discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, marital status, age, and receipt of public assistance benefits. Let us take age as an example, and apply the analysis developed above.
• 64There are also affirmative action guidelines approved by several U.S. Bank Regulatory agencies prohibiting discrimination in borrowing. These bar credit application discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, marital status, age, and receipt of public assistance benefits. Let us take age as an example, and apply the analysis developed above.