Why I Don't Like Empowerment Feminism

“Ein Gespenst geht herum in Europa---das Gespenst des Feminismus.” The topic of gender equality is lively discussed in politics, mainstream media (TV, newspapers) as well as on the social web (Facebook, blogs). The predominant version of feminism in these debates is different from traditional feminist positions aiming at equal (civil) rights and chances (voting, financial and sexual autonomy, education, and so on). The first line of argument is based on the observation that women often find themselves in an overtly or secretly sexist culture (“#MeToo”), and that this culture needs to be changed. I agree with the diagnosis and the general conclusion. The second argument is based on the observation that although women have, in Western societies, equal rights and chances as men, they are apparently still discriminated against: they earn less than men (the famous “gender pay gap”), and they are underrepresented in leading positions (“glass ceiling”, “gender bias”). As remedies to these perceived injustices, the feminists in question recommend quota for women in leading positions or similar affirmative action measures aiming at achieving equal power for men and women, as soon as possible. I would like to call this version of feminism “empowerment feminism” (EF). EF will be the target of my argument in the remainder.

Putting things a bit provocatively, I find the EF cause---unlike the #MeToo cause and initiatives against domestic violence etc.---illiberal, intellectually wanting, parochial, hypocrite, and unreasonably impatient. I will argue my case below and in the end, sketch an alternative form of feminism that is, in my view, more aligned with the needs and chances of women in society. I will take most examples from academia since it is an environment where EF is vigorously discussed (and endorsed) and I happen to know it well.

Illiberal (freedom vs. equality). Independent of whether or not there is genuine discrimination going on in academia, politics and business, a large part of the actual or perceived disparities is due to free choices. EFs have a hard time to accept the intrinsic tension between freedom and equality; they deny that disparities are acceptable if people choose to have it that way.

An example: people usually have to make important life choices in their late 20s or early 30s. Do they decide to put all weight behind their career, making long hours at the office? Or do they prefer to have a family and to spend time with their kids, perhaps working part-time in a decent position below the top level? What will, in the long run, make you happy? As a matter of fact, women choose the second option more often than men. This has partly biological and partly socio-cultural reasons. But in the end, each woman or each couple decides for themselves, and there is no reason why society should not accept the outcome.

In my experience, talented women who want to pursue a career in academia, business or politics can reach the top level as easily as men. The problems start when they want to have kids, especially when their partner is not enthusiastic about doing the major part of the household work. Then they tend to reconsider what really matters for them. Or they have to leave early from the office because there is nobody else to pick up the kids, and they miss the important informal meetings where alliances are forged, strategies are conceived and promotions are discussed. This is without doubt an important issue---but it is not only a gender issue, but an issue for anybody, man or woman, who wants to combine family and a professional career. More on this at the end.

We also observe that gender percentages vary widely across academic disciplines. There are lots of women in, say, developmental and social psychology, lots of men in, say, formal philosophy. Is this a problem? If yes, why so? As far as we know, men and women have similar cognitive capacities, but they tend, on average, to develop different (academic) interests. Why should we, as society, intervene and have more male social psychologists and more female philosophers of science? You often hear the word “diversity”, but this is rather a political slogan than an argument. The scientific literature does not indicate that a gender-mixed team of psychologists conducts better experiments than a predominantly male or female team. This is also to be expected because the real benefits of diversity lie in character traits that are only weakly correlated with gender, if at all (i.e., different ways of thinking). But this is something that the EF camp fails to acknowledge.

Lastly, a policy where formative events (e.g., summer schools) are accessible to women only, or where positions are reserved for female applicants, is in itself discriminating and at odds with the liberal ideal of a society. Everybody should be able to enhance their knowledge, and positions should be are assigned on the basis of merit rather than non-essential properties (gender, being a friend on the boss, etc.). We should be wary to undermine this liberal ideal for the sake of equality-related windowdressing.

Intellectually wanting. The evidence base for EF consists in studies or statistics that seem to suggest a systematic bias against women.  The argument usually runs like this (I take an example from academia): “Look, statistics show that only 10% of all full professors are women although they are 50% of the cohort of PhDs. This shows that discrimination is going on and that we must do something.” Similar arguments are put forward for arts (e.g., the Bechdel test for movies) and politics as well.

Unfortunately, almost no EF writer I have read takes the effort to look at the statistics in more detail. For the above case, the most trivial explanation is the scarcity of Full Professor positions, which are also seldom replaced due to their long tenure. So even in a perfectly gender-blind society, we could not expect to have an equal rate of men and women right now (though we will so in the future). Nonetheless, news headlines compare the rates of female professors across universities, female board members across companies, and so on. For whatever it is worth, in my own experience in academia, most superiors are happy to support ambitious and talented women, and to fill the higher ranks with them. I have seen no single case where a woman was discriminated against for gender-related reasons.

Studies in cognitive psychology have also often found that while men and women are equally intelligent on average, the variance of IQ for men is higher than for women. Supposing that intelligence is a relevant characteristic, it would then, ceteris paribus, be normal to expect slightly more men than women in top positions. Of course, the relevance of such results is up to debate, but it is characteristic that they are not even discussed or outrightly dismissed as probably biased. Perhaps because they don’t fit the desired conclusion.

Another example for dismissing alternative explanations is the notorious “gender pay gap” (where statistics are also often presented in a misleading way, e.g., by not correcting for level of position). What is at stake here is perhaps not discrimination against women. Sure, it could be that senior managers are slightly more inclined to fulfil the demands of a male subordinate, compared to a female subordinate. This is an empirical question, but even if the answer were positive, it could scarcely explain the amount of the pay gap. 

More plausible, and in line with evidence from other sources, is that women tend to be less assertive and demanding and more respectful in negotiations. The “gender pay gap” is in reality a pay gap between more and less cunning negotiatiors. Some women will be as successful as men, but gender is probably correlated with the relevant character traits. What needs to be changed are thus not gender-related issues, but a negotation system that punished employees for their modesty and acquiescence (e.g., by making all salaries public). And indeed, some expectations on women and girls to “behave nicely”. But this is something different than bias and discrimination.

Similarly, the underrepresentation of female main acts in Hollywood movies may have to do less with gender bias than with the following simple reasons:

(1) Many movie plots adapt novels, stories or plays which predominantly feature men, either because of the content (e.g., historical novels or fantasy novels such as “Lord of the Rings”), because of the time of writing (e.g., classical literature adaptations). The screenplay author can do little about this.

(2) Money. It seems that certain patterns sell to the audience and mainstream movies are, after all, commercial products. I don’t want to deny that Hollywood is a pretty sexist business, but some EF writers seem to mistake it for a charity institution. When movies with strong and courageous men and beautiful and caring women sell, it says more about society than about the movie business itself.

Parochial and hypocrite. Top positions in society are predominantly distributed among a specific social class: the daughters and sons of architects, lawyers, doctors and engineers. EF claims that there is a gender bias at work in this specific subclass of the population. This may well be the case, though its extent is probably not too large. However, almost nobody seems to ask the question: How can we make sure that middle and working class people can reach the top of society? How can we encourage the descendants of migrants to pursue a career in academics or politics? Usually, these people don’t know the implicit communication norms; they speak a different language, listen to different music, have different habits in their free time. 

There was a time when a saddle-maker was the widely respected first president of the Weimar Republic (Friedrich Ebert), but these times are gone. Nowadays, we give important jobs to somebody, with whom we would like to open a bottle of Barolo, go to the theater and talk about the latest trip to a Mediterreanean seaside resort. (I am certainly no exception here.) Whatever the effects of (implicit) gender bias are, they are certainly much less pronounced than the above effects, about which almost nobody seems to care.

My impression is, in a nutshell, that EF activists are not intellectually honest in their cause for economic and social empowerment, but rather parochial and centered around their own interests. If we assign resources to remove biases and to establish equality between different groups, they should not go to removing a minuscule gender bias, but to make sure that the above layers are well represented in leading positions, that the Rawlsian promise of “equal chances for everybody” is fulfilled. All arguments about role models, social justice, long-time benefits for society, and so on, apply there equally well, and the case is surely more urgent. But of course, white upper-class women (and men) with university degrees make themselves much better heard than sons and daughters of factory workers---especially if they have foreign and hard to pronounce names. It is fair enough to fight for its own cause, of course, but then one should just say so instead of occupying the high moral ground.

A concluding example: in the humanities, there are many young scholars from Eastern Europe, who are often highly talented, but have much tougher starting conditions as a result of the underfinanced academic system in their home countries. I have seen several summer schools in philosophy for women only, but not a single one for Eastern Europeans, although they are an obvious target group for a socially concerned academic policy. Such examples suggest that decision-makers at universities are concerned with what is politically fashionable, but not with social justice itself.

Intolerant. The ways quite some EF activists deal with dissenters in personal conversation and web discussion is notable. Denial of one of their premises or conclusions is met with rage and emotion. They have little tolerance for diverging views and see them as socially harmful and morally unacceptable. The idea that a different viewpoint could be interesting or relevant is, in spite of all emphasis on diversity, completely alien to them. Of course, there are laudable exceptions, but...

Even “serious” projects exhibit an astonishing degree of intolerance. For example, there is a pretty prominent watchdog website which observes the rates of female keynote speakers at philosophy conferences (https://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/gendered-conference-campaign/). Obvious nonsense from a statistical point of view, since most events feature just three or four keynote speakers, and in some subdisciplines 80% of all potential invitees are men. In addition, women decline invitations more often than men (family reasons). In spite of claiming not to be in the “business of blaming conference organizers”, the website also lists, on its front page, conferences which have failed to comply with their demands, and who are thus continuing “harmful practices”. Such name-and-shame practices are more reminiscient of totalitarian states than of liberal Western societies, but they are not untypical of EF activists.

Unreasonably impatient. Resolving social disparities is always an endeavor that demands patience and that is unlikely to be finished in the short run. The reasons are usually deeply engrained in the DNA of society, and this takes time to change. 100 years ago, women did, in many countries, not have the right to vote, to possess private property, or to attend university. 50 years ago, they were still largely excluded from the workforce or could divorce less easily than men. Fortunately, these disparities have mainly disappeared nowadays. There may still be some male bastions to fall, but there is no reason to suspect that this will not happen in due time. Is it really worth to give up, say, the meritocratic principle in academia just to accelerate this process? EF activists and their political allies usually give a positive answer, followed by the remark "we have waited long enough". This impatience reminds me of a small child which starts crying and shouting unless it gets a candy.

Concluding on a constructive note, I would like to say that things can and should be done to improve women’s career prospects---and in the long run, to make gender distribution more balanced at the top level. I am thinking of a principal cause of the current disparity: the challenge of getting and raising kids while at the same time pursuing a career. This is usually more disruptive for women than for men. Large companies should be forced, or at least incentivized, to offer affordable childcare to their employees. Flexible working times should be encouraged, and working part-time in leading positions should be commonly accepted. Negotiation procedures and salary scales need to be transparent. Mentoring for young employees (of both sexes) needs to become more standard to make sure that nobody is excluded from relevant networks.

I think that adopting such measures would tackle the causes of gender disbalance, and that the disparities would slowly vanish. Such measures would also benefit a larger share of women in society---namely those that will never make it to the boardroom or the lecture hall. The proposals are also in agreement with the liberal principle of providing equal chances and opportunities without promising an equal outcome. What EF proposes, by contrast, is to cure the symptoms without treating the disease.