Sex, Culture, and Justice: The Limits of Choice (18 page)

6. Ibid., 94.

achieving corporate career success is childcare. Barry is committed to the idea that it might simply be the case that women disproportionately choose to focus on childcare rather than on career success and that if this choice does not result from discrimination in education or employ- ment practices, liberals need not worry about it. The sort of discrimina- tion that should worry liberals is largely a matter of what happens to people once they have chosen to apply for certain jobs. There can be no liberal concern for the nature of that choice. To quote Barry again, there is nothing ‘‘necessarily unfair or oppressive going on if one as- pect of the importance of ‘group based affinities and cultural life’ is that members of different groups tend to cluster in different occupa- tions by choice. To the extent that this is the explanation of differential group outcomes, there is no question of ‘oppression.’’’
7

Contra
Barry, I argue in this chapter that there can be something wrong with different group outcomes based on the choices of the group members if the aforementioned conditions—the disadvantage and in- fluence factors—hold. In general, if they are present, it is not enough for liberals to say of an outcome that it was freely chosen by the relevant individuals and is therefore just. In other words, in these circum- stances free choice is not the end of the story.

First, the two factors in brief. The first factor which should make us take seriously the possibility that an outcome is unjust is if the choice in question harms the chooser in relation to those who choose differ- ently. It is a simple condition that may apply to a whole variety of freely chosen outcomes, and is necessary but not sufficient to render free choices unjust, and worthy of state interference.
8
Indeed, this element is not, in itself, sufficient to infer injustice, as will become clear, but it is the first indication that the outcome
may
be unjust. The position is worsened, from the perspective of justice, if the benefit accruing to one group is dependent on the other group choosing that which disadvan- tages them. I call this the disadvantage factor. The second factor applies if there are identifiable pressures on the choosing group to make that choice—especially if those pressures come from the group who choose differently and thus benefit. I call this the influence factor. Again, it may occur in outcomes that, if there is no inequality, do not justify

7. Ibid., 98.

1. An outcome may be unjust and yet not worthy of state interference in cases where state interference would compromise values other than justice. This point is expanded later.
   

   extra resources. Egalitarian liberals should, however, aim to reduce the extent of the influence factor. I return to this point later, but for now, we can take the influence factor as also necessary but not sufficient for egalitarian intervention. The existence of either the influence or the disadvantage factor should serve to alert us to the possible existence of injustice. Together, the disadvantage and influence factors are suffi- cient for an outcome to merit state intervention, even if it is the result of ‘‘free choice.’’
   

   The Disadvantage Factor
   

   The first factor that should make us suspicious about systematic differ- ences in group-based choices is the simple fact of differences in advan- tage that the differently choosing groups receive. The greater the differ- ence in disadvantage, and the more enduring and less reversible that disadvantage, the more we should worry.
   9
   For example, women who choose to become full-time housewives rather than chasing corporate careers will not just suffer the disadvantage of a lower income. They will also be significantly disadvantaged by their financial dependence on others, which will leave them less able to make autonomous choices or to resist future oppression from the person on whom they are de- pendent. Moreover, women who choose to eschew paid work will find that choice, and the consequent disadvantage, difficult to reverse. It is difficult to return to the workforce after prolonged absence, and almost impossible to reach a level of career success open to those who have
   

2. I discuss the issue of defining harm, and its relation to disadvantage, in greater detail in Chapters 5 and 6. One issue that arises in this context is that it might be objected that different cultures have different views of harm, so that what liberals identify as disadvantage might not be seen so by other cultures. An extreme version of this objection is made by Sander Gilman, who argues, against Susan Moller Okin’s critique of female genital mutila- tion, that ‘‘this is the model followed in the debates about female genital mutilation. Only intact genitalia can give pleasure. But is it possible that the projection of Western, bourgeois notions of pleasure onto other people’s bodies is not the best basis for anybody’s judgement?’’ (‘‘‘Barbaric’ Rituals?’’ 56). I believe,
   contra
   Gilman, that there are at least some objective standards of harm and disadvantage, and women with ritually mutilated genitals are unam- biguously worse off than those whose genitals are intact. However, I shall not argue for that position in this chapter. This chapter presents a liberal case for state intervention in cultural practices, and so will not persuade those who reject fundamental liberal principles such as liberty, equality, and (as I shall argue) autonomy. The argument, instead, is aimed at those who do share these fundamental principles, and who can agree on a liberal notion of harm and disadvantage. Barry argues along similar lines throughout
   Culture and Equality,
   and especially on pages 284–91. In Chapters 5 and 6 I relax this restriction and explore further issues about defining harm in different cultural contexts.
   

   not had such an absence. The choice, therefore, causes
   enduring
   disad- vantage.
   10
   

   The most pernicious element of the disadvantage resulting from women’s choice to become housewives, however, is that that disadvan- tage can directly advantage men who choose differently. In these cir- cumstances, it resembles exploitation. All households generate a con- siderable amount of housework, and if a couple have children, somebody has to look after them. It is usually assumed that men will not sacrifice their careers to meet childcare or domestic needs. In gen- eral, then, men are able to enjoy the advantages that come from pursu- ing paid careers only because others, almost always women, take on the responsibility for housework and looking after children. If it is the man’s partner who takes on full responsibility for domestic work, so that he and not she works, the man enjoys several advantages. He will receive the bulk of the household income, and as such will have considerable influence over expenditure. Depending on the earning potential of the woman, household income may be greater without the costs of professional childcare. The demands of the man’s work will be better met if they do not have to compete with the demands of the woman’s work: he will be able to relocate in response to job offers and work late without having to make childcare arrangements. He will be less likely to worry about the quality of the childcare his children are receiving, and will not have to make special arrangements if his chil- dren are ill or during school holidays. In these ways, then, the advan- tages that accrue to fathers who work full-time are dependent on the disadvantages suffered by their partners who look after the couple’s children full-time. The disadvantage of one group is directly related to the advantage of another.
   11
   

   The disadvantage factor is not bolstered by relatedness in the case of, for example, the salaries of management consultants compared to the salaries of teachers. There is a significant inequality of salaries be- tween the two professions, but the high salaries of management con-
   

3. I do not mean to imply that there are no rewards or advantages resulting from looking after children full-time, or that individuals who choose such a lifestyle have no good reasons for doing so. As will become clear, I aim to enable individuals to make such choices more easily, without suffering the accompanying disadvantages. For more on the issue of work and childcare, see Joan K. Peters,
   When Mothers Work;
   Joan Williams,
   Unbending Gender;
   and Sally Dench et al., ‘‘Key Indicators of Women’s Position in Britain.’’
   

4. Again, this is not to deny that men might suffer some disadvantages, such as reduced intimacy with their children, if they do not play a significant role in childcare.
   

   sultants do not depend on the low salaries of teachers. It is not neces- sary that teachers be paid badly if management consultants are to be paid well. There is no direct link between the advantage of one group and the disadvantage of the other. There is such a link, to give another example, between the disadvantage of a low-paid factory worker and the advantage of the factory owner. The factory owner is advantaged in indirect proportion to the factory worker: the less the worker is paid, the more profit is created for the owner. This element of relatedness to the disadvantage factor suggests that we ought to look more closely at the position of the factory worker. We should not simply dismiss her disadvantage as the unproblematic result of her free choice to work in a factory rather than start her own business. There is not yet enough evidence for oppression, but the fact of significant and especially de- pendent, related inequalities is an important indication of the need to examine the case further. As the example of the factory worker shows, liberals are used to conceptualizing state intervention in cases of eco- nomic disadvantage. In this chapter, I suggest that liberals should use the conceptual tools they have developed to cope with economic ine- qualities and apply them to cultural or social inequalities.
   

   The disadvantage factor is more significant, then, the more extreme and enduring is the disadvantage, and the more the disadvantage is crucial to others’ corresponding advantage.
   

   The Influence Factor
   

   We should start to suspect that systematically different choices might conceal injustice if they lead to significant, enduring, and related differ- ences in advantage. We can reveal that injustice if we find the second factor: identifiable processes by which one group is encouraged to make a disadvantageous choice.
   

   Of course, the influence factor draws heavily on the idea of social construction. The influence factor aims to capture the idea that individ- uals may be encouraged, by their social context, to make choices that harm them. I have already argued that all choices are importantly so- cial, in several senses. First, a choice is only ever possible between options that are
   available
   in any given society. Second, choices are con- strained by what is deemed
   appropriate
   in the relevant social context, and this judgment of appropriateness may be internalized by the chooser and not merely imposed from outside. Third, the
   meaning
   of a
   

   practice chosen by a given individual is not thereby determined by that individual. As I outlined in my discussion of a Foucauldian perspective on female and male genital surgeries, the meaning of practices shift between societies and over time. Moreover, as I suggested regarding Bourdieu’s regulated liberties, it is not possible for an individual com- pletely to redefine a practice, since she can control neither how it will be understood by others nor how it makes sense for her.
   

   Given these many ways that choices are subject to social influence, my current stipulation of an ‘‘influence factor’’ may appear odd. For, in a broad interpretation of ‘‘influence,’’ it will always be present; whereas a narrow interpretation (perhaps one based on explicit coer- cion or pressure) seems to ignore the myriad forms of social construc- tion. For my current purposes, however, it is the narrow interpretation we need, for several reasons. The first reason is that I want to develop a set of principles for state action that will sometimes be coercive. Lib- erals will be keen to avoid Isaiah Berlin’s totalitarian menace, and to do so it is necessary first to focus the concept of social construction on specific, identifiable processes of influence.
   12
   The second reason is that the accounts of social construction previously discussed, particularly that of Foucault, alert us to the fact that social construction is omni- present and inevitable. Although we can engender change, and even radical change, we cannot escape the social. Thus critique, and state action, must be focused on harmful or oppressive social norms (hence the disadvantage factor) and on those cases where generalized proc- esses of influence crystallize into more solidified interpersonal domi- nation. Finally, my account of social construction is not designed to render redundant the liberal value of autonomy, but rather to place it and its protection into sharper focus. This task is taken up in subse- quent chapters, but for now the value of autonomy provides us with reason to focus our attention onto identifiable—and alterable— interpersonal influence.
   

   We thus need a clearly defined concept of influence, and an example will help to illustrate it. As mentioned above, fathers can only pursue the top corporate jobs Barry discusses if someone else looks after the children, and fathers are less likely than mothers to consider childcare as their responsibility. One identifiable pressure on mothers to choose to stay at home, then, is the knowledge that if they do not, then nobody
   

5. Isaiah Berlin, ‘‘Two Concepts of Liberty.’’
   

   else will. This discrepancy does not come from nowhere. There are significant social norms that encourage mothers to stay at home to look after their children which do not constitute discrimination of the sort that Barry recognizes. The media are full of articles about the harm done to children if their mothers go out to work.
   13
   There are scare stories about the dangers of professional childminders, the educational damage to children who are not looked after by full-time mothers, the importance of early bonding between mother and child, and the depri- vation of the latchkey child.
   14
   Even if the media report a study finding no significant harm to children, the emphasis is always on the effects of working mothers and not on working fathers.
   15
   As a result, even if they do not believe that working will necessarily harm their children, mothers and not fathers are confronted with the notion that their choice to pursue a career is a problematic and difficult one, whereas fathers hardly have to choose at all. When they
   are
   worried about possi-
   

6. Consider the following examples from British broadsheet newspapers in 2000. On April 5, the
   Telegraph
   reported research showing that ‘‘most mothers would prefer to stay at home and look after their children if they could afford to do so.’’ Alongside the research the
   Telegraph
   ran a profile of a female investment banker earning £51,000 a year who gave up work to look after her children and told the newspaper, ‘‘I had to make a decision on what was more important to me, to be a mother and spend time with my child or to be a career woman. I didn’t have to think very hard’’ (Celia Hall, ‘‘Mothers ‘Prefer to Be at Home with Their Children’’’; Sally Pook, ‘‘‘Giving Up Work Was Best Thing I Did’ [
   sic
   ]’’). In December, the
   Times
   columnist Jessica Davies surveyed the evidence that children are damaged if their mothers work outside the home, and concluded that most mothers would leave paid employ- ment if they could (‘‘Am I Damaging My Children?’’).
   

7. In 1997, the high-profile case of Louise Woodward spawned panic about the dangers of childminders. Woodward was a nineteen-year-old British au pair who was found guilty of manslaughter in a Massachusetts court when eight-month-old Matthew Eappen died in her care. To compound parents’ anxiety, the
   Telegraph
   ran several stories in 2003 reporting re- search that nursery care is even worse than childminder care (e.g., Rebecca Abrams, ‘‘Nurser- ies Are Safe and Secure—But Are They Bad for Your Baby?’’ and Liz Lightfoot, ‘‘Too Long at Day Centres ‘Can Disturb Children’’’). An extraordinary example of a story reporting that working mothers harm their children’s education can be found in the
   Telegraph.
   Its social affairs correspondent reported that ‘‘for every year that a mother works before her child starts school, the prospects of gaining at least one A-level fall by as much as nine percent. The greatest impact is felt when the mother works full-time. But the research shows that even part-time employment during a child’s pre-school years is detrimental to its academic pros- pects’’ (Martin Bentham, ‘‘Working Mothers ‘Damage Children’s Education’’’). Bentham’s article is inadequate in many ways. No evidence is given to suggest that the connection between a mother’s working pattern and the exams that her child takes at least thirteen years later is causal rather than merely correlative. Moreover, Bentham does not consider whether there is evidence for other correlations (such as between exam results and working fathers, or exam results and poverty).