THERE IS A POLITICAL MAXIM THAT RUNS SOMETHING LIKE THIS: “If a man is not a socialist in his twenties, he has no heart. If he is still a socialist in his forties, he has no brain.”
While I don’t entirely agree with this maxim, it comes to mind in considering a situation at the University of British Columbia (UBC) where Andre Sobolewski, a 27 year old UBC biology student, has been fasting for human rights. That is, he has been fasting for the restoration of the British Columbia Human Rights Commission—which is quite a different kettle of fish.
This is why Sobolewski’s effort is such a shame. If he were really fasting for human rights, well and good. We can use all the human rights we can get.
But this young student has been trying to launch moral pressure on behalf of the British Columbia Human Rights Commission, which is, despite its self-acclaimed and self-serving title, in direct opposition to human rights, correctly understood.
It is always important to talk about human rights. But it is particularly important to analyze the concept of human rights because of the political brouhaha surrounding the cutbacks on the British Columbia Human Rights Commission imposed by Bill Bennett’s Social Credit government. And given actions such as Andre Sobolewski’s fast, it becomes more crucial than ever.
Let’s begin with some of the recent activities of the British Columbia Human Rights Commission. First, it has plagued a man called Bill Konyck because he wanted to name his business Hunky Bill’s Perogies. The Commission made him go through the courts for months and lose an inordinate amount of money in those bureaucratic red tape snafus.
In another example, the British Columbia Human Rights Commission refused to allow a golf course to refuse service to women on Saturdays. When women prohibited male attendance at a UBC conference called Women and Words, however, there was no pressure from the Commission.
Then there was the case of a little old lady who advertised for a “good Christian boarder” to live in a basement suite. She was told that this is against human rights legislation. Presumably she was discriminating against “bad non-Christian boarders.”
Another human rights case, this one in Alberta, involved a Tall Girls Shop, which catered to women 5 feet 10 inches and taller in height. They were advertising for a tall woman sales clerk. “No!” said the Human Rights Commission, this is discrimination. Obviously, the reason for the store’s action was that a tall woman sales clerk would be better able to empathize with the problems of tall women shoppers. But this, presumably, discriminates against short people and males, and was not allowed.
Consider as well the fact that the Roman Catholics, the Russian Orthodox Church, and Orthodox Jews all refuse to ordain women. That is, they will not hire women for certain jobs in the priesthood.
Here is a conflict of the so-called human rights law with the rights of religious liberty. And people must have the liberty to practice religion as they wish.
But what of the bread-and-butter issues? Are not discrimination laws needed, for example, to protect women? Well, the usual argument is that females earn something in the order of 55 percent to 60 percent of male earnings, and that this is due to private sector employer discrimination.
Nonsense.
The Fraser Institute published a book called Discrimination, Affirmative Action, and Equal Opportunity, which reported some interesting discoveries. First of all, we were unable to find any substantial private employer discrimination against females. Actually, this cannot occur in the private sector to any great degree.
Let’s consider the following case. Suppose there are a man and a woman, each with a productivity of $10 an hour. Assume that the man is paid $10 an hour and that the woman is only paid $6 an hour because she is being discriminated against. In such a situation, it is as if the woman has written on her forehead a little sign saying, “hire me and you’ll make an extra $4 profit over and above that which you would make if you hired a man.”
How long can such a situation exist in the private market?
A person who started hiring women at $6.25 or $6.50 or $7 an hour would have a severe competitive advantage over people who were sexist and only employed men, or who refused to pay women more than $6.
These discriminators would go bankrupt, so such an occurrence is extremely unlikely to take place in the private sector.
The contrast with the public sector is very clear here. How many women are there in legislative assemblies? How many women are there in Parliament? How many women are there in the senior civil service? The point is that there is no profit and loss incentive which works against discrimination in the public sector.
But we still face an interesting question: If there is no discrimination in the private sector, why is it that women earn so much less than men?
Statistical material collected for the book Discrimination, Affirmative Action, and Equal Opportunity revealed that one of the most important explanations for male/female earnings differentials is the asymmetrical effect of marriage on incomes.
The institution of marriage enhances male incomes and reduces those of females. Married women do more housework than their husbands, more childrearing than their husbands, and the migration patterns of married couples are such that they enhance male incomes, and reduce female incomes.
For example, suppose there is a married couple in Victoria and both are Ph.D. chemists. The male receives a far better employment opening in New Brunswick where his wife has no job offer whatsoever. If they relocate, she will have to pick up whatever job she can. Can employer discrimination really be blamed for the great disparity of income which will develop as a result of this relocation choice? Moreover, research shows that the couple is much more likely to make this move if it is the male who has received the offer rather than the female.
Then, too, is the case where a wife refuses a raise or refuses a promotion on the grounds that she will end up earning more than her husband—and this will threaten her marriage. As well, there is the whole question of the socialization of little girls who are taught not to beat Johnny in tennis, otherwise he will not date or marry them.
There has even been research that demonstrates high school girls do much better in tests when there are only other girls in the room. Now this is a serious problem. I’m not trying to sweep it under the rug and say it’s unimportant. It is important. And we as a society have to deal with it. But not by blaming employers for discriminating against women. That just doesn’t wash.
The Fraser Institute made a statistical test. Using Canadian data, we calculated male and female income ratios based on marital status. We divided our sample into two groups. First, there were those who had been married—which included those who were married, divorced, separated, or widowed. Second, there were people who were never married.
The statistics were very instructive. Women who were married, divorced, separated, or widowed earned 33.2 percent as much as men in the same situation. But among people who had never been married, females were found to earn 99.2 percent of male income.
This is why we say that the asymmetrical effects of marriage are very important factors in understanding income distribution among the sexes. This has nothing to do with private employer discrimination, the bête noir of the British Columbia Human Rights Commission.
The Fraser Institute’s study was based on data from the 1970s, but recent investigations have had the same results. A report on research completed late in 1983 states:
To their surprise, the sociologists discovered that the social and economic gains borne by so many women during the past decade have had remarkably little impact on the traditional gender roles assumed by the more than 3,600 married couples in the study.
Although 60 percent of the wives had jobs, only about 30 percent of the husbands believed that both spouses should work—and only 39 percent of wives thought so.
No matter how large their paycheque, the working wives were still almost entirely responsible for the couple’s housework. Husbands so hated housework, the researchers found, that wives who asked them to help out could sometimes sour the marriage.
Most women, on the other hand, even executives, do not consider housework demeaning.1
Well, if women do all the housework and the men are busy studying or preparing for promotions, is it any wonder that given equal talents, the male will outpace the female income?
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The Whig-Standard (Ontario, Canada), January 27, 1984, Religion Section.
1 Philip Blumstein and Pepper Schwartz, American Couples: Money, Work, Sex (New York: William Morrow, 1983).