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What's in a Number? Consequentialism and Employment Equity in Hall, Hurka, Sumner and Baker et al

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Leo Groarke
Leo Groarke
Affiliation:
Wilfrid Laurier University
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Abstract

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Type
Interventions/Discussions
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , Spring 1996 , pp. 359 - 374
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1996

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References

Notes

1 Baker, BrendaBoulad-Ayoub, JosianeCode, LorraineMcDonald, MichaelOkruhlik, Kathleen (Chair), Sherwin, Susan and Sumner, Wayne, Report to the Canadian Philosophical Association from the Committee to Study Hiring Policies Affecting Women (Ottawa, ON: Canadian Philosophical Association, 1991).Google Scholar

2 Ibid., p. 14.

3 Hurka, Thomas, “Affirmative Action: How Far Should We Go?,” in Contemporary Moral Issues, edited by Cragg, Wes, 3rd ed. (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1992).Google Scholar A similar view is implicit in Hurka's “Giving Women an Even Break at Work,” which is also found in Contemporary Moral Issues. Both essays appear in Hurka, Thomas, Principles (Toronto: Harcourt Brace, 1994).Google Scholar

4 Sumner, Wayne, “Positive Sexism,” in Contemporary Moral Issues, edited by Cragg, Wes, 3rd ed. (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1992), p. 223.Google Scholar

5 Hall, Courtenay, “From Justified Discrimination to Responsive Hiring: The Role Model Argument and Female Equity Hiring in Philosophy,” in Contemporary Moral Issues, edited by Cragg, Wes, 3rd ed. (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1992).Google Scholar

6 In the words of the former premier, Bob Rae, employment equity is justified because it will “add tremendously to productivity.” Quoted in Mackie, Richard and Khan, Treena, “Ontario Presents Equity Bill,” The Globe and Mail, June 26, 1992, p. A1. I discuss the bill's consequentialist reasoning as I proceed.Google Scholar

7 I think there is, in contrast, something to the compensation defence, but I leave it elsewhere. See Groarke, Leo, “Affirmative Action as a Form of Restitution,” Journal of Business Ethics, 9, 9 (September 1990): 207–13;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Groarke, Leo, “Beyond Affirmative Action,” Atlantis: A Women's Study Journal, 9, 1 (January 1983): 13–24.Google Scholar

8 Baker, et al., Report to the Canadian Philosophical Association, p. 14.Google Scholar

9 Hall, “Responsive Hiring,” p. 234.

10 Sumner, “Positive Sexism,” p. 218.

11 Statistics Canada, Education in Canada: A Statistical Review for 1990–91 (Ottawa, ON: Education, Culture and Tourism Division, Statistics Canada, 1992), p. 210.Google Scholar

12 Statistics Canada, Education in Canada: A Statistical Review for 1973–74 (Ottawa, ON: Education, Culture and Tourism Division, Statistics Canada, 1975), p. 113.Google Scholar

13 The figures for 1981–1982 and 1991–1992 are compared in Statistics Canada, Education in Canada: A Statistical Review for 1991–92 (Ottawa, ON: Education, Culture and Tourism Division, Statistics Canada, 1993), p. 214.Google Scholar

14 Hurka, “Giving Women an Even Break,” p. 208.

15 “Instructors ranked below assistant” is a Statistics Canada category roughly equivalent to “lecturer.” Apparently, Statistics Canada describes the category in Hall's way because the rank of lecturer has not traditionally been regarded as an official rank in Canadian (as opposed to European) universities.

16 Riseborough, Rosalind, “Statistics Canada Data Reveal Teaching Employment Pattern,” CAUT Bulletin, November 1993, p. 4.Google Scholar

17 For a discussion of these statistics, see Brown, Grant, The Employment Equity Empress Has No Clothes (Edmonton, AB: Gender Issues Education Foundation, 1992), p. 11.1 have more to say about Brown's study below.Google Scholar

18 “Statistical Profile of Women in Canadian Academe,” Status of Women Supplement, CAUT Bulletin, November 1993, p. 4.Google Scholar

19 This information is available in Wilfrid Laurier University's undergraduate calendar.

20 “Women in the Academy: Statistics,” Status of Women Supplement, CAUT Bulletin, April 1993, p. 5.Google Scholar

21 Groarke, “Beyond Affirmative Action.”

22 Irvine, Andrew, “Jack and Jill and Employment Equity,” Working Paper No. 1 (Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Centre for Applied Ethics, 1991).Google Scholar See especially p. 19. A revised version of this paper appears in this issue of Dialogue, pp. 255–91.

23 Brown, The Employment Equity Empress Has No Clothes, and Brown, Grant, “Discrimination in University Hiring: Against Women or Men?” Inroads, 1, 3 (Summer 1994): 98–107.Google Scholar Brown has been ignored, apparently because of his sometimes polemic tone. Whatever one makes of this, there can be no doubt that he offers a far more detailed analysis of the consequences of employment equity (the statistical evidence, the pertinent studies, etc.) than one finds in Hall, Hurka, Sumner and Baker et al.

24 Cf. Thomas Hurka's remark that “A University of Calgary report notes that in 1990, only 22 percent of the professors hired at the university were women, even though in 1988, 30.6 percent of Canadian Ph.D.'s went to women” (“Why Equality Doesn't Mean Treating Everyone the Same,” in his Principles, p. 180). There are a number of problems with this kind of comparison: the labour pool Hurka mentions is, for example, relevant only to junior appointments, and not very useful unless considered in the context of broader trends (it is possible that fewer women were hired at Calgary because they had so many opportunities that many decided to go elsewhere). Putting such concerns aside, it is important to stress Hurka's own recognition that these disciplinary distinctions may account for these figures. If the majority of professors hired at the University of Calgary were hired for positions in the sciences, for example, then women may have been hired at rates that exceed their availability in the labour pool, for women constituted only 10% of the Ph.D. students in engineering and applied sciences and 15% of the Ph.D. students in mathematics and physical sciences in 1991–1992.

25 The committee writes that it is not enough to “start hiring women in proportion to their representation in the pool of qualified applicants” (Baker et al., Report to the Canadian Philosophical Association, p. 14; my emphasis).

26 Baker et al., Report to the Canadian Philosophical Association, Appendix B.

27 As it is likely that this is because men have left academe, it is arguable that men's success rate is only 64%, in comparison with a women's success rate of 84%.

28 The Report to the Canadian Philosophical Association also fails to take into account women who were hired with qualifications earned in American and British universities.

29 Statistics Canada, Education: 1990–91, p. 211.Google Scholar

30 In a number of universities without preferential policies, hiring is not discriminatory towards women even if one adopts the 50% test. Concordia has no official policy of preferential hiring, for example, but 80% of the positions awarded at Concordia in 1992–1993 went to women. On the Concordia case, and others, see Brown, “Discrimination.”

31 Okin, Susan, Justice, Gender and the Family (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1989), p. 171;Google Scholar and Dagg, Anne Innis, The 50% Solution (Waterloo, ON: Otter Press, 1986).Google Scholar

32 Gilligan, Carol, In a Different Voice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982);Google ScholarRuddick, Sara, Maternal Thinking (New York: Ballantine, 1990);Google ScholarDevine, Celia Wolfe, “Abortion and the ‘Feminine Voice’,” Public Affairs Quarterly, 3, 3 (July 1989): 81–97;Google Scholar and Moir, Anne and Jessel, DavidBrain Sex (London: Mandarin, 1989).Google Scholar The latter write that “To maintain that men and women are the same in aptitude, skill or behaviour is to build a society based on a biological and scientific lie” (Ibid.., p. 5).

33 Elshtain, Jean, “Feminist Political Rhetoric and Women's Studies,” in The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences, edited by John, S. Nelson, Megill, Allan and Donald, N. McCloskey (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987).Google Scholar

34 Wilson, John, “Some Problems about Racism, Sexism, Etc.,” Paideusis: Journal of the Canadian Philosophy of Education Society, 4, 2 (Spring 1991): 29.Google Scholar

35 “Women in the Academy,” p. 5.

36 Brown, “Discrimination,” pp. 104–5. The original calculations are found in Elrod, Terry, “Data on U of A Faculty Hiring Indicate Women Are Favoured 2 to 1 (6 to 1 in Arts),” Academic Concerns, 1, 1 (January 1992): 4–6.Google Scholar

37 Perhaps one could argue for the (unintuitive) view that Ph.D.'s are outweighed by other factors, but then one must explicitly base the case of equity on this argument, not on the statistics which consequentialists have emphasized.

38 “Women in the Academy,” p. 5.

39 Personally, I think this increase is due to the simple fact that attitudes to women have changed, and probably to a special effort to promote women's careers (this is a promotion that has occurred independently of official employment equity programs, as can be seen from the fact that women have made gains whether or not official or weak or strong equity policies have been in place). Brown's account suggests that part of the increase in women pursuing careers is due to unnecessary discrimination against men, discrimination which would probably be difficult to justify from a consequentialist point of view. What analysis will hold up in the long run is difficult to say. However, the lack of evidence supporting the claim that rampant discrimination has been a problem suggests that equity policies that remove this discrimination do not offer the best account of the increase in women graduate students.

40 See, for example, the critique of role modelling in Schlesinger's, ArthurThe Disuniting of America (New York: Norton, 1992).Google Scholar Note especially his examples on pp. 90–93.

41 Baker, et al., Report to the Canadian Philosophical Association, p. 14.Google Scholar

42 Dagg, Anne Innis, “Toward a Feminist Academy,” Policy Options, 14, 2 (March 1993): 13–18.Google Scholar

43 According to this theory, pornography would reduce sexual crime by providing a “safety valve” that allowed individuals prone to violent sexuality to release their urges without resorting to crime.

44 On the catharsis effect, see Clark, Lorenne, “Sexual Equality and the Problem of an Adequate Moral Theory: The Poverty of Liberalism,” in Contemporary Moral Issues, edited by Cragg, Wes, 3rd ed. (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1992).Google Scholar For a discussion of evidence on the causal link between violent pornography and violence, see Take Back the Night: Women on Pornography, edited by Lederer, Laura (New York: Morrow, 1980)Google Scholar, and MacKinnon, Catharine and Dworkin, Andrea, Pornography and Civil Rights: A New Day for Women's Equality (Minneapolis, MN: Organizing against Pornography, 1988).Google ScholarDworkin, Ronald has criticized such views in “Women and Pornography,” New York Review of Books, October 21, 1991, pp. 36–42.Google Scholar

45 I am indebted to the two Dialogue referees for valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper.