Gender Inequality, Laissez-faire and Positive Action

Last week, in the run-up to International Women's Day, there were efforts made in Germany to tackle inequality between the genders in the workplace. While a new law was passed for gender quotas to be introduced to the boardrooms of large companies (The Guardian, 2015), there was still ongoing resistance to legislation aimed at exposing, and ultimately undoing, gender inequalities in pay (Osborne, 2015).

The fact that these moves are necessary in a wealthy and developed country like Germany - or in the UK where the Liberal Democrats have been pushing for similar moves for some time, particularly in the face of a failure of the Conservative 'voluntary' reporting system (Wintour, 2015) - highlights the scale of the problem. Quotas, in turn, represent the practical response to the continuing inequality (Saul, 2015).

And yet, resistance remains to levelling the playing field. There is an insistence in the Western world upon trusting in laissez-faire - removing the obvious formal institutional obstacles and letting the world right itself. That attitude is not helped much by gender quotas being considered an imperfect solution (White, 2015).

However, the world is uncomfortably unequal. In the face of plain unfairness, the simplistic, and false, answer to the struggles of others is victim-blaming (Burkeman, 2015). There is a determination, witnessed in the wider struggle against inequality, to shift the responsibility for unfairness from the established order and those who benefit, and to turn it into blame to be placed on those who aren't succeeding (Seabrook, 2014).

The facts are pretty clear: matters can't just be left to right themselves (Topping, 2015). It was true for the poverty and desperation in Victorian England that led to the collapse of the old Laissez-faire economics, and made way for the gradual rise of social insurance, pensions, welfare and the public healthcare. It is true now tackling gender inequality. The world needs a helping hand to combat problematic institutional biases (Dudman, 2015).

The feminist rallying-calls of public figures like Emma Watson is a reminder of how to tackle these great challenges (HeForShe, 2015): positive thought and positive action, in the pursuit of progress.

In the pursuit of social progress, the old ways of thinking have to change. The 'let alone' attitude is not good enough, particularly when the solutions of negative liberty - simply keeping people free from outside interference - don't, and can't, bring meaningful equality of opportunity, or offer the people the path to the better, and more fair, lives they want.

There is a pressing need to demand a more positive liberty. Affirmative action, in this sense, is about acting to make the principals of fairness in a free society a fact. That burning heart of feminism, is the same one that beats in the breast of all struggles for equality and fairness. Quotas may not be a perfect solution, but they are a positive and practical solution in a world that is imperfect and unfair.

References

'Germany passes gender quota legislation for the boardroom'; in The Guardian; 6 March 2015.

Louise Osborne's 'Plan for 'equal wages' law in Germany meets with strong industry opposition'; in The Guardian; 6 March 2015.

Patrick Wintour's 'Lib Dems push through mandatory reporting of gender pay gaps'; in The Guardian; 6 March 2015.

Heather Saul's 'International Women’s Day 2015: The shameful statistics that show why it is still important'; in The Independent; 6 March 2015.

Michael White's 'In politics and boardrooms, quotas – wrong in theory but right in practice – are no panacea'; in The Guardian; 16 January 2015.

Oliver Burkeman's 'Believing that life is fair might make you a terrible person'; in The Guardian; 3 February 2015.

Jeremy Seabrook's 'Why shame is the most dominant feature of modern poverty'; in The Guardian; 30 September 2014.

Alexandra Topping's 'Gender pay gap will not close for 70 years at current rate, says UN'; in The Guardian; 5 March 2015.

Jane Dudman's 'The 10 best and worst countries for female public leaders – in charts'; in The Guardian; 6 March 2015.

'HeForShe Conversation with Emma Watson on International Women's Day 2015'; from HeForShe on YouTube; 8 March 2015.