With the continuing refrain of the “War on Women” still ringing loudly out across the land, we are hearing more and more calls for government to intervene and help out these poor gals who just can’t seem to catch a break. Although to be frank, if the War on Women is anything like the War on Drugs or the War on Poverty, I don’t think the ladies have very much to be worried about.
One of the more absurd ideas floating around is for corporate gender quotas, to ensure that companies are not acting like sexist pigs and hiring only men. Some writers have pointed to Norway as a model for this legislation, claiming that gender quotas “work” there.
To say that gender quotas “work” one must first define what the word “work” means. If it means that forcing companies to hire more women resulted in companies hiring more women, then yes, we can say it worked. But why is that an end goal in itself? You could mandate that grocery stores stock the same number of apples and pears, and crow that your policy had been a success without ever explaining why equality between apples and pears was desirable in the first place.
If your goal is equality of outcome, you can, to a certain extent, achieve this through mandates, but it is incumbent on policymakers to explain why equality of outcome is the goal to begin with. If gender quotas move towards an equality of outcome scenario, they move away from three other, in my view, more valuable goals. These goals are 1) individual liberty, 2) equality of opportunity, and 3) general economic prosperity.
Let’s take these one at a time.
- Individual liberty
This is an easy one. It is obvious that a legal compulsion on an individual or firm to hire people of a specific gender restricts liberty. We are supposed to have the freedom of association, which means that we can choose the company we keep. An employment contract is nothing more than a mutually beneficial arrangement between two people. If we cannot choose whom to contract with, then we cannot choose whom to associate with, and our freedom as individual actors is compromised.
Morally, I view this as a very bad thing, irrespective of any practical consequences.
- Equality of opportunity
Equality means different things to different people. To egalitarians, it means everyone should end up with the same result: the same amount of money, the same level of happiness, etc. In a more traditional sense of the word, however, equality means equal treatment under the law and, to a certain extent, equality of opportunity. In short, no one should be given legal preference over anyone else. So while a blind man may never become a commercial pilot due to an accident of nature, it is not due to arbitrary legal preference, and while an incompetent bungler may have difficulty finding a job, it will not be because the law prevents anyone from hiring him.
Gender quotas, like affirmative action, and also like Jim Crow laws, give legal preference to a certain class of person. While those on the political left are quick to push for laws banning sexism and racism, they fail to see that a law that decrees “you must hire a woman before you hire another man” is itself sexist, as is quickly revealed if you swap the two genders, or substitute races in their place.
The usual argument given for these laws is that a history of discrimination has left society with an uneven playing field, and legal action is therefore necessary to level it out. Two wrongs don’t make a right, however, and equality of opportunity is better achieved by treating everyone equally than by implementing legal preference, which after all only breeds resentment and backlash.
- General economic prosperity.
Companies exist to make money. Hiring decisions are therefore made with the aim of making as much money as possible. If a man is hired over a woman, it is because the person making the hiring decision believes he will result in greater profits for the company than his female competitors.
It will at once be objected that this is an idealized state, and that the analysis ignores real-world factors such as discrimination. While it is undoubtedly true that there are some people in the market who practice discrimination for personal reasons, market forces are stacked quite strongly against them. A hiring manager who declines the best candidates in favor of inferior ones because of personal animus will lose money for his company compared to less bigoted competitors. He therefore risks not only his own job, but the ability of his company to effectively compete in the market. Furthermore, if it is discovered that he is a sexist, his punishment will undoubtedly be swift and terrible, as sexism is not a popular attitude to hold in today’s world. The sexist hiring manager who declines to employ women when they are the best candidates for the job will be an extreme and rare minority.
Gender quotas, or indeed quotas of any kind, force rational profit-maximizers to make sub-optimal business decisions, which will have a negative impact on economic growth and prosperity in the long run.
Thus, we see that gender quotas are not only morally wrong insofar as they restrict individual liberty, but are doomed to have bad outcomes from a utilitarian standpoint as well. As a coda, let me just add that, at a time when women are achieving remarkable things all around the world, it’s a little insulting, dare I say even sexist, to suggest that they need the overbearing hand of government in order to succeed.