Discrimination

Women were held in thrall through much of human history, and remain so in much of the world, due according to Hilary Lips (1981) to the “agonic power”¹ of men that derives from physical strength, education, money and status—all traditionally associated with men.

New Zealand in 1893 was the first country to extend suffrage to women. Australia, Finland, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland soon followed. Most other countries finally did so in the years immediately after World War I. In some of these countries, including the United States and Norway, women had the right to run for office before they had the right to vote.

Elizabeth Stanton and Lucretia Mott initiated the suffrage movement in the United States in 1848. Wyoming gave women the right to vote when it became a territory in 1869 and when it became a state in 1890. Colorado and Utah followed in 1893 and 1896. Jeanette Rankin (R, Montana) served in Congress before women could vote. A pacifist, she voted against declaring war both in 1918 (with 49 others) and in 1941 (alone). In 1967 at age 87, she organized a protest against the war in Vietnam. In 1920, Congress passed and the states quickly ratified the Nineteenth Amendment extending the vote to women in 1920.

The growing list of modern countries in which women have served as heads of government now includes Argentina, Bangladesh, Burundi, Central African Republic, Germany Great Britain, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Latvia, Liberia, Nicaragua, Norway, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Ukraine (Inter-Parliamentary Union 2000, Norris 2000), undoubtedly with more to come. For years, the junta that ran Myanmar kept Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest despite her victory in parliamentary elections.

Fourteen countries have constitutionally mandated quotas for women in parliament. Thirty-one have quotas in their election laws. Sixty require political parties to include some minimum (usually about 30%) of women candidates in each election. In western democracies, the conflict over quotas pits two concepts of equality against one another. One is the radical (now politically liberal) notion of equal result and compensation across generations for past ills. Defenders of quotas argue that they prevent tokenism and guarantee women their “fair share” of power. They argue that women bring valuable and unique perspectives to decision making. Finally, defenders of quotas argue that women are just as qualified as men, although in other contexts they argue that women do not have equal educational opportunity.

Opponents of quotas in Western democracies take the classical liberal (now conservative) view that equality is limited to opportunity. In this view, society should remove the barriers, step aside, and let the chips fall where they may. Quotas are unfair, undemocratic, and imply that women need preferences because they are less competent (Dahlerup n.d., Hoffmann 1994). Quotas for one underrepresented group imply quotas for every such group: by ethnicity, handicap, religion, sexual orientation, ad infinitum, ad nauseum, ad absurdum.

Women flooded into the factories in World War I, despite wages about half those men earned for the same work. The same thing happened in World War II, although the National War Labor Board ineffectually urged companies to set equal pay scales voluntarily. Newspapers listed jobs separately for men and women, with separate pay scales, until passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963. The act required equal pay for equal work defined by skill, seniority, physical or mental effort, level of responsibility, and working conditions within each workplace. Unless statistics consider these categories, results are impossible to judge.

In fact, American women have largely won the battle for equal pay despite statistics suggesting that they earn only about 75% of what men do. The statistic is true enough on average, but controlling for four variables that are the basis for legitimate differences in pay eliminates the disparity. First, men tend to work from their first job until retirement, while women tend to drop out until their children reach school age, so that by the peak earning years males average seven more years work experience than women.³ Second, their labor force participation rate is about 10% lower than that of men. More women than men work part-time so earn less in salary and benefits (Hymnowitz 2012). Third, until recently, women had less education and had jobs requiring less skill, effort, and responsibility. Fourth, even among college graduates, women tended to major in fields that led to lesser paying jobs: in biology instead of physics, in sociology instead of economics, and so on. Regional differences in salaries and proportion of women in the work force may also help explain the apparent discrepancies. Finally, a lifetime view of income differences would adjust for the fewer years women pay into Social Security and pension funds and the greater number of years they collect, again on average. Much of this is changing, hence the reduced disparities.

Women were long denied equal education (one reason they had lesser jobs), but this is changing rapidly. Girls are trouncing boys on reading tests, catching up in math, and beginning to dominate extracurricular activities. “Only” 27% of girls, but 73% of boys are diagnosed with learning disabilities, while 76% of boys but “only” 24% of girls are diagnosed as emotionally disturbed.⁴ Girls are less likely to cheat on tests, wind up in detention, or drop out of school, and are more likely than boys to go to college. If current trends continue, we may soon see the time when males rather than females require affirmative action.

Women have reached or are approaching parity with men even in high payoff graduate degrees including law, management, and medicine (Sommers 2000; Tiger 2000). Women are earning bachelors and masters degrees at a significantly higher rate than men, make up almost half of all law students and are rapidly closing the MD and PhD gap (Business Week 26 May 2003).

Unsurprisingly, this is beginning to impact wage statistics. Among single, childless workers between 22 and 30 in the majority of US metro areas, women now earn 9-18% more than their male counterparts do.⁵ Women increasingly are becoming presidents of major corporations and universities. By 2004, Avon, eBay, Hewlett-Packard, Lucent Technologies, Travelocity, Ventas, Xerox, and Young & Rubicam were among major corporations run by women, while women were “heirs apparent” at dozens more.⁶ Women have headed the 24-campus California State University and others including minority women have headed its individual campuses. Women have held presidencies at City University of New York, Stanford, and The University of Michigan among others, and have served as Cabinet secretaries since the Eisenhower presidency. In the military, American women now reach the rank of general.

The increase in “house husbands” may be a reflection of well-educated highly qualified women getting better jobs than their husbands. Finally, since 1965 married men have almost tripled their weekly contribution to food preparation and cleanup, housework and childcare to an average of 11.1 hours a week.⁷ In what appears to be a continuing trend the woman in 38% of all US marriages is the higher wage earner, up from 24% in 1987. Women are earning 57% of all bachelor’s degrees, 60% of all master’s degrees, and 52% of all doctoral degrees.