Gender Equality Elusive at Top?

That was the headline at yesterday's Los Angeles Times business page, although I've added the question mark.

See: "Women on Wall Street: Small group at the top gets smaller."

"While the ouster of a number of top Wall Street women cannot necessarily be tied directly to the glass ceiling or sexism per se, the numbers aren't good," said Deborah Ancona, a professor of organization studies at the MIT's Sloan School of Management. "Women fill a minority of top leadership positions in corporate America."

But RTWT.

Actually, I don't think we'll ever have exact equality in that department, and I don't know if it was God's plan to do so, in any case. As James Taranto has written:

Men and women are intrinsically unequal in ways that are ultimately beyond the power of government to remediate. That is because nature is unfair. Sexual reproduction is far more demanding, both physically and temporally, for women than for men. Men simply do not face the sort of children-or-career conundrums that vex women in an era of workplace equality.

That said, see Patricia Sellers, at Fortune, "Carol Bartz exclusive: Yahoo "f---ed me over..." (At Memeorandum.)

Hotel Maids Get Panic Buttons

At Jawa Report, "Dear Foreign Visitors to NY: Hotel Maids Are Not Meant to Be Laid."

And Wall Street Journal, "After Hotel Attacks: Panic Buttons."

The Pierre hotel has suspended a supervisor and agreed to equip all room attendants with panic buttons in the wake of two alleged sexual attacks on Manhattan hotel housekeepers in about as many weeks.

The decision came after meetings with union officials, who pressed for strengthened protection for workers.

"Let everybody in the world traveling to New York know that when they stay in a hotel room, the person cleaning that room is armed with a button that they can immediately press if you're stupid enough to get inappropriate," said Peter Ward, president of the New York Hotel & Motel Trades Council, which represents about 30,000 workers.

A Pierre spokeswoman, Nora Walsh, confirmed that the hotel will give room attendants the alarms—modeled after those used by some elderly people to alert a central security office—as soon as a system can be devised.

The Sofitel New York—where former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was accused of an assault—has also agreed to arm attendants with panic buttons, union officials said. Sofitel officials did not respond to requests for comment.

Well, I doubt if it's just visitors. See, FWIW, "Sex, Lies, Arrogance: What Makes Powerful Men Behave So Badly?"

Equal Pay Day — Oops, There Goes the Feminist Narrative!

From Carrie Lucas, at Wall Street Journal, "There Is No Male-Female Wage Gap":

Feminist hand-wringing about the wage gap relies on the assumption that the differences in average earnings stem from discrimination. Thus the mantra that women make only 77% of what men earn for equal work. But even a cursory review of the data proves this assumption false.

The Department of Labor's Time Use survey shows that full-time working women spend an average of 8.01 hours per day on the job, compared to 8.75 hours for full-time working men. One would expect that someone who works 9% more would also earn more. This one fact alone accounts for more than a third of the wage gap.

Choice of occupation also plays an important role in earnings. While feminists suggest that women are coerced into lower-paying job sectors, most women know that something else is often at work. Women gravitate toward jobs with fewer risks, more comfortable conditions, regular hours, more personal fulfillment and greater flexibility. Simply put, many women—not all, but enough to have a big impact on the statistics—are willing to trade higher pay for other desirable job characteristics.

Men, by contrast, often take on jobs that involve physical labor, outdoor work, overnight shifts and dangerous conditions (which is also why men suffer the overwhelming majority of injuries and deaths at the workplace). They put up with these unpleasant factors so that they can earn more.

Hmm. I doubt Amanda Marcotte's going to be pleased, and don't even get me started about Sady Doyle!

Wal-Mart Gender Discrimination Case Heads to Supreme Court

This thing is huge.

At NYT, "Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Wal-Mart Appeal":

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear an appeal in the biggest employment discrimination case in the nation’s history, one claiming that Wal-Mart Stores had discriminated against hundreds of thousands of women in pay and promotion. The lawsuit seeks back pay that could amount to billions of dollars.

The question before the court is not whether there was discrimination but rather whether the claims by the individual employees may be combined as a class action. The court’s decision on that issue will almost certainly affect all sorts of class-action suits, including ones asserting antitrust, securities and product liability.

If nothing else, many pending class actions will slow or stop while litigants and courts await the decision in the case. Arguments in the case are likely to be heard this spring, with a decision expected by the end of June.

Wal-Mart, which says its policies expressly bar discrimination and promote diversity, said the plaintiffs, who worked in 3,400 stores in 170 job classifications, could not possibly have enough in common to make class-action treatment appropriate.

“We are pleased that the Supreme Court has granted review in this important case,” Wal-Mart said in a brief statement. “The current confusion in class-action law is harmful for everyone — employers, employees, businesses of all types and sizes and the civil justice system. These are exceedingly important issues that reach far beyond this particular case.”

There has been no ruling yet on the plaintiffs’ claims that they were discriminated against, and the ground rules for how those claims will be heard have not yet been determined. Resolution of the merits of the plaintiffs’ case will now await a decision about whether it may go forward as a class action.

In their brief urging the justices to deny review, the plaintiffs said Wal-Mart’s objection to class-action treatment boiled down to the enormous size of the class. But size is “legally irrelevant,” the brief said.

“The class is large because Wal-Mart is the nation’s largest employer,” the brief said, “and manages its operations and employment practices in a highly uniform and centralized manner.”

Brad Seligman, the main lawyer for the plaintiffs, said Monday that plaintiffs welcomed the court’s review of the limited issue and were confident that the justices would rule in their favor.

“Wal-Mart has thrown up an extraordinarily broad number of issues, many of which, if the court seriously entertained, could very severely undermine many civil rights class actions,” Mr. Seligman said.

In April, an 11-member panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled by a 6-to-5 vote that the class action could go forward.

Judge Michael Daly Hawkins, writing for the majority, said the company’s policies and treatment of women were similar enough that a single lawsuit was both efficient and appropriate. He added that the six women who represent the class, four of whom have left Wal-Mart, had claims typical of the other plaintiffs.

Year of the Woman? Not for Feminists

I guess it's logical in our identity-obssessed, quota driven politics, but all this talk about "The Year of the Woman" is so yesterday. In California we've had two women senators for two decades. In 2008, Hillary Clinton nearly won the Democratic nomination and Sarah Palin was the GOP vice presidential nominee. And with Elena Kagan's likely confirmation, there'll be three women sitting on the United States Supreme Court. We have full gender equality in the United States. Women are still moving in top positions of power, and their numbers have yet to catch up with men in governmental institutions, but it's silly to deny full equality of opportunity. Indeed, Hanna Rosin at The Atlantic --- a gender extremist if there ever was one, in her demonization of breast-feeding, for example --- is jumping for joy in "The End of Men" from the July/August edition. Sure, a lot of it's over-the-top, but the larger reality of the empowerment of women is no longer in question.

So why all the attention to the string of women's victories in Tuesday's primaries? The press needs a catchy spin, for one thing. Or, more likely, journalists need to feed the cultish mavens of gender equality. For example, at Wall Street Journal, "Women Candidates Come Into Their Own." And at USA Today, "Women candidates play major role in 2010."

But wait! Everything's not so hunky dory on the feminist front. At the Los Angeles Times, "2010: the Year of the Conservative Woman?", you'll notice the stress on "conservative women," as if women on the right aren't for equality. And check the comments at Jezebel, "Meet The Political Ladies Who Triumphed Last Night." Tuesday was a big night for women candidates, but leftists can't stand it:

Republican women politicians (and just in general) are the worst. They want to take away my rights but have the right to keep theirs. Fuck all of these bishes!

I'm all for sisterhood (or whatever) but not if it includes women like these.

*****

Do we really want politicians, even if they are women, making decisions for our states and/or country that includes many people they don't even consider worth their time, not to mention trying to take ownership of our reproductive organs and forcing religion into politics?

*****

Oh hello there women of the GOP. Why don't we make a deal here. I won't try to control your uterus and you don't try to control mine.

That kind of downer on the left has Rachael Larimore asking, "Where’s the Rah-Rah Sisterhood?"

Why the schizophrenia on women's progress? Why the disconnect and disenchantment? Obviously, feminism today is an ideology that leverages victimhood and male-hatred into a regime of abortion-on-demand and gender quota set-asides. It's one of the most important currents on the contemporary radical left. And the trend isn't just isolated to extremist feminist bloggers like Amanda Marcotte or Jessica Valenti. Take a look at Barbara Kellerman's piece at yesterday's Business Week, "Don’t Drink Yet to New ‘Year of the Woman’":

There’s no doubt, obviously, that the role of women in society is changing, in some cases in important ways. Among the changes are those in education, where females are increasingly more educated, better educated and better credentialed than their male counterparts.

But so far as leadership roles are concerned, whether in government or industry, or for that matter in nonprofits and in the military, women in America still badly lag behind. Here are just a few of the figures...

What follows there is a long list of statistics on the comparative indicators of women's progress. But we'll always have differences in achievement in America. We're to the point where women are catching up and surpassing men in the everyday measurements of success such as college attendance and middle-class earnings. That's what Hanna Rosin's boasting about at The Atlantic. And until the rest of the downbeat press corps and radical feminists start picking up that meme, despite increasing female representation in politics, we'll never truly ever have a "Year of the Woman."

Obama's Socialist Doppelgänger

Below is the "unprecedented" autobiographical propaganda video featuring Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. Plus, considering my piece last night ("Obama's Doppelgänger"), even more of a kick is Philip Klein's piece at American Spectator, "Obama Nominates Himself":

As her undergraduate thesis topic, Kagan chose to write about the demise of the American socialist movement, a story which she called “a sad but also a chastening one for those who, more than half a century after socialism’s decline, still wish to change America.... In unity lies their only hope.”

She explained in the acknowledgements that her brother’s “involvement in radical causes led me to explore the history of American radicalism in the hope of clarifying my own political ideas.”

And Michael Goldfarb has more, from May 8, 2010, "Elena Kagan, Radical?":

Yesterday THE WEEKLY STANDARD obtained a copy of Elena Kagan's senior thesis, written almost thirty years ago while an undergraduate at Princeton. The title of the thesis: "To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933."

Plus, from May 8, 2009, "Young Elena Kagan: Hoping For A 'More Leftist Left'."

Obama's Doppelgänger

Elena Kagan's President Obama's "body double." See WSJ, "Elena Obama":

In selecting Elena Kagan to be the country's next Supreme Court Justice, President Obama has tapped the legal world's version of himself: a skillful politician whose cautious public persona belies a desire to transform the court and shape a new Constitutional liberalism.

In announcing her appointment yesterday, Mr. Obama praised the Solicitor General as someone who had won kudos from "across the ideological spectrum" and proven that she could work with conservatives, even (gasp) hiring some while dean of Harvard law school. Known for her personal charm and politesse, Ms. Kagan is also a woman of the modern judicial left who is unlikely to break from the High Court's liberal bloc on any major legal dispute ....

Mr. Obama may also see in his nominee a reflection of his philosophy that judging cases should be guided as much by personal experience and "empathy" as by the plain words of the Constitution. Writing in 1993 in the Texas Law Review about Justice Thurgood Marshall, for whom she clerked, Ms. Kagan provided a glimpse into her own jurisprudence.

Justice Marshall, she wrote admiringly, "allowed his personal experiences and the knowledge of suffering and deprivation gained from those experiences, to guide him." In his view, she explained, Constitutional interpretation demanded that the courts "show a special solicitude for the despised and disadvantaged . . . and however much some recent Justices have sniped at that vision, it remains a thing of glory."

Across her career, Ms. Kagan has also been a reliable legal partisan. While Harvard dean, she joined three other law school deans in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee on detainee policy, arguing that "immunizing the executive branch from review of its treatment [of detainees] strikes at the heart of the idea of the rule of law." In a 2007 Harvard commencement speech, Ms. Kagan disparaged legal memos written by John Yoo as "expedient and unsupported legal opinions," that "failed to respect the law." So much for crossing the intellectual aisle.

Ms. Kagan is nonetheless likely to clear the Senate, barring some new development. The Senate confirmed her as Solicitor General last year 61-31, and at least as many will vote against her again for what is a lifetime appointment. But Republicans lack the votes to defeat her even if they were inclined to filibuster, and we doubt that they are.

Video Clip: Drill scene from Brian De Palma's "Body Double" (1984).

NOT EXACTLY RELATED BUT F***ING INTERESTING NEVERTHELESS: Elie Mystal, "Elena Kagan and Me: One Semester of Civ Pro With the New SCOTUS Nominee" (via Memeorandum).

The Second Sex in American Higher Education

I just covered gender equality in class today. At least one of my students is well trained in the ideology of "institutional racism and sexism." I normally just nod my head and say, "good point," unless there's an immediate factual issue in dispute. I do often mention that more women attend college and graduate these days than do men. Another student raised the point that on average women make 75 percent of a man's earnings. It's about 80 percent nowadays, so the gap is closing. I expect the gap to close entirely if we see increasing returns to education in the years ahead, and if boys and men continue to fall behind women at all levels of education.

See, Christina Hoff Sommers, "Baseless Bias and the New Second Sex," and Mark Perry, "Women Now Dominate Higher Education at Every Degree Level; The Female-Male Degree Gap Grows."

Hat Tip: RealClearPolitics.