FemiNazi!

We're back in business, after last week's discharge of Rebuttals, William Easterly's Tyranny of Experts (Review available shortly) and a few days contemplating the fate of Jan Palach, in Prague. 

Today's accusation is a severe one - one might even call it absurd. But, as Deidre McCloskey often repeats, do hear me out. Consider that I might have a point. FemiNazi.

In my country, there's been a major feminist revolution over the last decade, intensified in the last few years. This, in a nation where gender equality has reached further than perhaps anywhere else. One, particularly awful accusation laid against these proclaiming feminists are the combination of their ideologi with Hitler's, to form the FemiNazi - allegedly it's just a word to describe a radical feminist.

That's of course absurd. But hear me out (though I have to pay homeage to my sister for unconciously pointing this out).

Feminists, quite understandably, don't like views as the ones below.

It consolidates the idea that women's value lies in the beauty and sexiness of their bodies. It's repulsive. It confines the idea that females are for sale, alluding to arranged marriages, prostitution or trafficking. So Feminists want to ban such commercial activities. Ok, sure.

Now, let me elaborate the comparison to Hitler.

Feminists don't like images as the one above - they don't like women being exploited, as they see it. Thus, they'd want to ban it. Whatever is wrong or harms the project of Gender Equality is to be taken away, banned. Punished. Eradicated.

Nazis in the Third Reich didn't like Jews. They believed Jews to be the lowest of the low, filthy and strain on Humanity. Thus, they wanted to ban them. Punish them. Eradicate them.

Here's the similarity that justifies the label 'FemiNazi'; The will to ban, use State Violence to punish and eventually eradicate whatever you find repulsive. It's not the magnitude of the crime here, as obviously murder millions of Jewish people is a far worse action than banning sexist commercial. The point is the will to ban what you don't like. The will to hinder other people from expressing ideas, from trading or even from outright living.

The will to HINDER other people, essentially. This is always and everywhere a moral statement saying: "I know better than you, what's good for you", "My moral is preferable to yours".

Regardless the circumstances, that's a horrible stance, quite justifiably attaining the epithet 'Nazi'.
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Disclaimer: The argument can be made for most things socialists, statists or State-embracing liberals do; they all rely on the state to forcefully remove what they dislike, meaning the epithet "Nazi" might be applicable even to them. 

[Another One] of the Inherent Contradiction(s) of the Left

I previously wrote a piece on how Lefties are contradictory when they simuntaneously protect women's right to their bodies in Abortion debates, while refrain from the same protection in Labour Market debates. Here's another amusing contradiction:

A few months ago, during my heavy rampaging at those poor Lefties at People & Planet, I made a post about feminist economics. Since there's a major wave of socialist and feminist ideas tumbling across both my native country of Sweden and my current home, Scotland, I thought to re-introduce a special feature of the Feminist argument. Here's what I wrote about the Wage Gap:

"Wage gap. All kinds of numbers are generally presented to support this idea; women make 15% less than men, £5000 less in a year; higher in private sector (19%) than public (13%) etc, etc. What does this mean? How is this measured? The simplest of comparisons are made through dividing all income by women by the amount of women to the same ratio for men. Clearly inaccurate, because that would compare the pay of a female working minimum wage at tesco with a handsomely payed lawyer. Most studies then controll for other factors, most obviously what profession you're in. But even then, same questions arise; differences in productivity, experiences, in certain education etc. Some studies controll for more factors than others, but very few of them are conclusive in the sense that they add such tiny things as choices or personal adequacy.
Truth to be told, when more factors are accounted for (education, experience, career choice or even negotiation skills) the gap narrows into virtually nothing. There is no wage gap, there's only choices. More extensive reading here."

Libertarian Uni March 8, 2014.

Also, yesterday I shared the picture below on facebook, resulting in some pretty decent discussions about related issued. Now, I'm still looking for the sources to some of these claims, such as more likely do die at work or how the 14% "more time at work" is calculated. If anyone knows, please give me a shout!

Let's Get Down to Business!

Literally, actually. So, feminists claim women earn a percentage of what men earn (77%, 95%, 85%, whatever the specific number might be, but you get the idea - it's below 1). To a superficial reader that's accurate, and nobody is actually disputing that the following calculation gives us a number less than 1: 

<Total Wages Earned by Women>

<Total Wages Earned by Men>

After giving it a moments thought, though, you realize that this calculation compares people on minimum wage with Wall Street Excecutives. Or Steve Jobs, or J.K Rowling. The rest of us are not refuting this calculation - we're just laughing at its sillyness and the conclusions drawn from it ("OMG, DISCRIMINATION IN THE WORKPLACE").

There's more to the story. You have to control for things such as location, education, productivity, presentational skills, perhaps humour, fashion or whatnot a feature employers might value in any given employee. Studies that do, generally get a smaller "Gap". As Ellen Fishbein greatly points out, though, most studies never claim that this "gap" is discrimination - their authors say it is due to measures they didn't take into consideration.

Ok, so where's the contradition here?

If, as the Lefties say, women 

a) are just as good as men at a particular task in a particular field, and 

b) are payed less on average because of gender discrimination, 

another one of their favorite claims would come into question: Profit-Maximization. 

If a firm, simply by substituting women for men, could save 10%, 15%, 23% on their labour costs without loosing out on productivity or output (because of a above), AND they're constantly seeking to max out profits - Why wouldn't all firms stop hiring men and substitute women for men?

They could pocket a decent profit and still lose out on nothing. 

So, if we add Profit-Maximizing to the equation, our contradiction is complete:

A) women are just as good as men at a particular task

B) women are payed less on average because of gender discrimination

C) Firms are profit-maximizing entities

The only conclusion that follows is: Women would be prefered/have higher employment in doing such a task. 

Since that is not the case, illustrated by our friends on the left, one of these premises have to go. As I explained above: if firms could have double-digit returns on substituting women for men (without losing output), and we're not seeing that happening - one of our premises are incorrent. One has to go. 

Which one is it gonna be, Lefties?

Feminist Economics - an extension

This is the 7th part of the "Leftie Serie" which I created after attending the People & Planet Conference on the 8th of March 2014. 
Here are links to the other posts: Feminist Economics, Inequality, Financial Crisis, Layoffs vs. Bonuses, Defending the 1%, The Austerity Myth

After a few very rewarding discussions following my post on Feminist Economics the other week, I had enough material for an extension on the subject.

Most of the critique I had regarded the idea that I, simply, missed the actual point of feminist economics. Also, when a friend of mine explained how naturally the alleged wage gap disappears when accounting for all variables (including say lifestyle choices), that moved my perception a bit further. Great discussion!

Anyways, his argument was as follows: if we assume a patriarchy within the workforce, women systematically being discriminated against, rewarded less wages for their labour regardless of experience/knowledge etc. The entire feminist story, essentially. If we assume that, we'd consequently have to assume that women value certain things (say leisure, or providing care, or rather stay home with the kids etc) more than do men. My argument is based entirely on this valuation, where I claimed it was inherently individual and thus acceptable. However, my friend pointed out, what if - given said assumptions - women are taught to value certain things more than they naturally or individually would have done absent such teachings?

Such a statement could obviously be questioned epistemologically. But, if taken at face value it does change the outcome of the argument, and I would be inclined to accept the raison d'être of feminist economics.

However, obvious criticism occurs. Questioning why an agent value a good or service in a certain way, which is at the bottom of this new foundation of feminist economics, leaves the field of economics. Economics take valuations and actions by individuals, corporations or government as given. We question what incentives govern the outcome and how these incentives and actions change; but economists regularly don't take into account why an individual prefer a certain type of goods over another. It is simply taken for granted, assumed to be beyond the field.

Also, examining why individuals value certain actions over others is the subject of other fields; psychology or sociology instantly comes to mind. Thus, the sociological/political notion of feminism, adjusted for economics with a somewhat different point of view (including differing valuations between individuals/groups of individuals) instantly sends it straight outside the field again.

In this sense, feminist ideology applied to economics might be more relevant. However, it also firmly distinguishes itself from economics as an academic field, thus making "Feminist Economics" look like an oxymoron. 

Feminist Economics

After the countless amount of ideas, statements and reasoning I was exposed to at the People & Planet Conference on Economics today (the "Lefties Conference", that I refered to previously), I decided to make an extended series. Every day for the coming weeks or so, I'll be posting something that originated at this conference and address the flawed reasoning and/or incorrect premises used in reaching their conclusions.

First up, in honour of the day, I'll dedicate my first blog post to Feminism. Now, I'm not a particularly big fan of feminism, depending obviously of what you choose to fill that concept with. This position I've addressed elsewhere. However, at the Conference I was introduced to the field of "Feminist Economics", and as this blog overwhealmingly focus a lot of its attention of economics, obviously I was curious.

The way I understand Feminist Economics, it includes the regular presuppositions given by marxian approach to class remade and re-organised for Sex or Gender; structure, exploitation, traits inherent to those groups that determine their actions etc. Wendy McElroy has done extensive works in that particular area. Anyways, we touched upon 3 specific areas that came up during the session.

1) Domestic work done by women is excluded from measures of the Economy.
2) Women are forced to choose between Career and Family.
3) Stats and the Wage Gap


1) Domestic Work
The argument here is that domestic work (care ex or relatives of children, household cleaning, cooking) is unpaid, doesn't involve a measurable transaction and is not included in the GDP, thus in the economy as a whole. Feminist Economics try to distinguish itself from 'Traditional Economics' by including such unpaid work into their models and measurements of the economy.

2) Career or Family?
Such an ancient question, constantly been part of the feminist movement. How is a woman to choose? Does she even have to? Can she have both? The discussion here is that there's a social pressure for women to focus on family, a structure implicitly telling women they're bad mothers if they spend too much effort/time on their careers. Because men doesn't face these questions, all things equal, women will be disadvantaged by such anticipations.

3) Stats and the "wage gap"
We had three sets of statistics presented to us. Taking them at face value, they were "Women hold 70% of jobs paying the minimum wage"; "30 000 women are sacked each year because they are pregnant"; "Average Domestic work for women are 3x the domestic work of men".

Also included the discussion about the wage gap, that is men making more money than women, within the same occupation.

Addressing these issues resolve mainly around two things; Refutal of the "Wage Gap" and the notion of Choice. In the first two areas, choice is a dominant factor, largely ignored. Let me give you a hypothetical. Let's say the entire economic society went 'equal' overnight; supply and demand randomly created an equal pay for everyone (women included) and sectorial work identital between men and women. No wage gap, no involuntary part-time work, no penalty for choosing family etc. Now then let's also say there's a change in attitude towards leisure in the case of some women whilst the pattern of leisure/work for men is held constant; these women now prefer staying home, planting flowers in the garden, watch tv, involve themselves in community work and whatnot to a larger extent than before. They substitute some work for leisure and are therefor better off (First, they had a certain ratio between work and leisure that they were happy with; now the change in preference altered that ratio, resulting in a higher rate of leisure, and they recieve more personal benefits from this - otherwise they would stay in the same ratio as before, like the other women did). 

How would we see this? We would see that 1) the wages of men would outstrip women (if women work less and pay is perfectly equal, their aggregate wage is reduced), 2) men would work more than women, 3) women would be overrepresented in part-time jobs. Not too different from the story Feminists tell us today.

My point here is that domestic work is a choice; relationships, assumed here to be male-female, are determined by their reciprocal relations. Simply, in living together, men and women decide who is taking up what task, who is doing what. If that choice comes out with 5 vs 15 hours work respectively, what does it matter? Two people voluntarily choose to distribute domestic work in a certain pattern. No more, no less. Domistic work is, by its nature, unpaid, because it is what you do in your home. The fact that women happen to do more of such work than men means very little, especially for the entire economy. Irrelevant.

Second point: Wage gap. All kinds of numbers are generally presented to support this idea; women make 15% less than men, £5000 less in a year; higher in private sector (19%) than public (13%) etc, etc. What does this mean? How is this measured? The simplest of comparisons are made through dividing all income by women by the amount of women to the same ratio for men. Clearly inaccurate, because that would compare the pay of a female working minimum wage at tesco with a handsomely payed lawyer. Most studies then controll for other factors, most obviously what profession you're in. But even then, same questions arise; differences in productivity, experiences, in certain education etc. Some studies controll for more factors than others, but very few of them are conclusive in the sense that they add such tiny things as choices or personal adequacy.

Truth to be told, when more factors are accounted for (education, experience, career choice or even negotiation skills) the gap narrows into virtually nothing. There is no wage gap, there's only choices. More extensive reading here.

Bottom Line: if there is no wage gap due to sex, and the domestic issue is largely determined by choices, the fundamenta for "Feminist Economics" is largely pulled away.

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P.S: There was also a discussion about particular male characteristics that women allegedly had to embrace in order to become successful career-wise (ie, the idea that 'female traits' such as emotion or care is less usefull in business and career than are 'male traits' like logic or self-discipline and whatnot). A widely-used UK example is Margaret Thatcher, who, allegedly, wasn't female enough.
That's a perfect example to what I mean with "Epistemology" in my story of Feminism: how can we know that? How is such knowledge obtained? How is even 'male traits' to be defined?

Also, the idea of "Sacked because of Pregnant" faces the same issue; how do we know? Because such an action is illegal in the UK, it's not simply to gather statistics of "reason for redundancy". Furthermore, Wendy McElroy has a great outline of why exactly discrimination is justified.