Men Are From North Dakota and Women Are From South Dakota
Kerry Howley | November 29, 2007, 12:20pm
Notre Dame Philosophy Professor James Sterba and the Independent Women's Forum's Carrie Lukas debate feminism at Cato and can only agree on one thing: pornography is really, really bad. Sterba says something incomprehensible about the fact that men's rights are not violated by Shoebox greeting cards. Lukas mentions The Vagina Monologues, which is a relief because if anyone from IWF goes 30 minutes without mentioning Eve Ensler, the universe will implode. Lukas argues that women aren't discriminated against in the workplace; it's just that "if one person like potato chips, and another person likes pretzels, it's ridiculous for us to each to try to make sure that each has an equal share." I think I blacked out for a moment after that line, but you can watch the whole thing (as I did) here.
The different-preferences-create-different-outcomes argument is ambitiously superficial and question begging. Absent any account of how preferences are shaped, I'm not sure why anti-feminists think they're saying something intelligent when they boldly assert that men and women want different things. IWF loves to talk about Title IX, and it's a great example of a cultural shift affecting preferences in young women. Did 14-year-old girls just not like sports before Title IX and the rise of the girl jock? Or did Title IX help create a culture where a broader range of interests could be engendered and cultivated? Does the fact that girls in 1950 did not aspire to captain high school soccer teams say anything interesting about women? I don't think so.
As far as good old, traditional discrimination persisting despite market forces to the contrary, I find Roderick Long's account extremely compelling:
A wage gap might persist even if employers are focused solely on profitability, have no interest in discrimination, and are doing the level best to pay salary on marginal productivity alone. But there is no reason to rule out the possibility of deliberate, profit-disregarding discrimination either. Discrimination can be a consumption good for managers, and this good can be treated as part of the manager's salary-and-benefits package; any costs to the company arising from the manager's discriminatory practices can thus be viewed as sheer payroll costs. Maybe some managers order fancy wood paneling for their offices, and other managers pay women less for reasons of sexism; if the former sort of behaviour can survive the market test, why not the latter?
Actually, everything Roderick Long writes on this topic is extremely compelling. This especially.
*Headline stolen from Janet Hyde.
Hans Bader | November 29, 2007, 1:00pm | #
I disagree with Long, the writer Howley inexplicably praises, since he seems to endorse irrational sex discrimination in child custody decisions that is harmful to children's welfare.
I am saddened and puzzled by Long's lament about belated moves towards equality in family law.
He complains that "sex discrimination law has, in the hands of male legislators and judges, been used to reverse 19th century feminist gains in custody and divorce law."
I assume that the "gains" he is talking about was the shift from one sexist paradigm to another -- from the former presumption that the children go to the father in the event of a divorce, to the "feminist" presumption that they should go to the mother instead.
Now, thanks to sex-discrimination rulings like Orr v. Orr, the law says the kids should go the parent, regardless of gender, whose selection would be in their best interests.
In practice, of course, the mother still tends to get custody -- which may children in father-headed households outperform, and out-achieve children in mother-headed households: because a father has to be much better than a mother to get custody of the kids, owing to gender bias.
So Long doesn't have to worry about "sex discrimination" ending just yet, unfortunately.
It ought to end, though. The mother isn't always the better parent or the primary caregiver during the marriage. In a significant minority of cases, the father is the more involved or better parent than the mother.
Yet in many family courts, women get custody 80 percent or more of the time.
When I worked at a non-profit law firm, I saw many cases where little children -- little girls and little boys -- suffered because they were left with inattentive or abusive mothers and step-fathers, rather than loving fathers, because the family court judge just couldn't believe that a man could raise a child as well as a women.
These little girls and boys suffer because of the "sex discrimination" in child custody decisions that "feminists" defend (state NOW chapters do everything possible to fight moves to facilitate fathers' custody and visitation) and that Long seems to endorse.
Ironically, back in the 1970s, before it was overtaken by sexist radicals, NOW's leaders actually favored reforms that would promote fathers' participation in their children's lives.
Now, NOW takes the opposite position, and does everthing possible to block fathers from visiting with, or having custody (joint or otherwise) of their children.
Note that in part owing to gender-bias in custody decisions, divorces are far more likely to be initiated by wives (who expect to receive custody) than husbands.
Two thirds of all divorces are initiated by the wife over the husband's objection, typically no-fault divorces. (See annual data from National Center for Health Statistics).
The fraction is even higher among spouses with children.
Note that in many states, a wife seeking a no-fault divorce can seek lifelong alimony after being married for just a few months. (See the Virginia Supreme Court's 1981 decision so holding, in a case where a marriage lasted only weeks).
Is that fair? If you left your law partnership, would you expect your ex-partner to pay you a fraction of the partnership profits for life?
But that is the "feminist" position in the analogous area of alimony. Feminists have fought tooth and nail legislation like the California law that adopts as a rough rule of thumb that alimony will last only half as long as the marriage itself.
I am not, incidentally, divorced.
