From: sheaffer@netcom.com (Robert Sheaffer)
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
Subject: Re: More Hallucinations (was: Women as Victims)
Date: 7 Oct 92 22:50:00 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)

In article <1992Oct6.231105.7461@panix.com> gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
>
>So what is it you want to change, Robert?  "Preferential"
>hiring gave this little fragment of this big corporation
>a 6:2 proportion of men to women in management.  This is 
>now okay, or it's not.  Are you saying that "preferential" 
>hiring was a good thing in the past?

The important but unstated assumption in your argument is that all jobs
"should" be held equally by women and men, and that when this is not the
case, it is somehow "wrong." This is a premise that I reject completely.
In a free society, women and men will make very different choices, and
*why* they make these choices is not nearly so important as the fact
that they DO. If preferential hiring of women still left men with a
6:2 advantage in management over women in this instance (25% female),
then without it the number might perhaps tend toward 20% or 15% or
whatever. And whatever number that may be is the "right" number, not
some artificial 50% based solely on an envy-ridden ideology.

Imagine what would happen if some future president were to name Andrea
Dworkin as "Czar of Gender Equality", and she dictated that 50% of
all manicurists and hairdressers had to be male.  And, since there
were not enough volunteers, Uncle Sam was calling YOU! (Then you wake
up, in a cold sweat.) But the point being, you cannot "equalize" the
trades and professions without massive degrees of coercion.


>
>And could we skip over the part about "qualified"?  You
>know, and I know you know, that one's qualifications are
>a small part of the decision as to who gets hired and 
>promoted and who doesn't, unless you're talking about
>civil service examinations where qualification is defined
>as a score on a test.  Business doesn't work that way.
>Not on Earth.

Only those businesses whose highest priority is to earn a *profit*.
They'll hire whichever qualified candidate is willing to do the
work for the lowst pay. And if, as Warren Farrell points out, women
*really were* (as in the fairy tale) paid 59 cents on the dollar
for doing the same work as men, then corporations EVERYWHERE would be
dumping overpaid men on the streets, and hiring women in their place.


      (From "Feminists in Fantasyland", Act 2, Scene 4):


EXECUTIVE:       Why, Smidley, you've reduced the payroll budget in
                 your department from $10,000,000 to 5,900,000 in just
                 one year, yet there has been *no* change whatsoever
                 in the work you've gotten done! How did you pull off
                 this miracle?

MIDDLE MGR:      It was easy, chief! I fired those men, and hired
                 women in their place. We only had to pay 'em
                 59% as much!

EXECUTIVE:       Smidley, you're a genius! Have a cigar.

-- 
  
        Robert Sheaffer - Scepticus Maximus - sheaffer@netcom.com
  
 Past Chairman, The Bay Area Skeptics - for whom I speak only when authorized!

       "Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.
        Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has
        broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or
        where it will end."
                               - Emerson: Essay, "Circles"
Newsgroups: alt.feminism