According to an opinion column written by T. Emmett Ryan, it is time feminists embrace “laissez-faire capitalism,” or, as it is known to others, “rampant capitalism,” in which all financial transactions are completely free from state intervention. Did you hear that, ladies? We ought to stop nagging legislators to promote gender equality in the workplace. Instead, we should just shrug our shoulders and accept the fact that women are a commodity of lesser value.
In the utopia envisioned by Ryan, an employer can hire anyone he or she wants for any reason and at any wage. In our economy, men just happen to be at a higher value than women, so it only makes sense for them to earn more in wages. If a woman wants to be competitive in this market, her best option would be to accept a lower wage. Doesn’t that sound empowering?
Ryan’s logic for this is completely sound according to the fundamental laws that govern markets. In order for a state to enforce an equal-pay act, the state would have to assume the cost of labor in a given market and redistribute wealth from the firms to the laborers, thus reducing economic efficiency. In the case of a market in which women are a lower-valued commodity, artificially making their value equal to that of men would likewise reduce economic efficiency as well. Furthermore, if a woman’s value is artificially higher than it ought to be, a sexist employer will simply not hire her. Following this argument, the only way a woman can compete in such a market would be to accept a lower wage and the lower standard of living that comes along with that wage.
From a purely economic viewpoint in which efficiency is favored above anything else, this makes complete sense. However, Ryan is failing to understand that if we lived in a laissez-faire economy — for example if he were to work at a burger joint — he would probably earn less than a dollar by the hour since the minimum wage greatly reduces economic efficiency, which places the wage way above economic equilibrium.
He is also failing to understand that sexism, as well as all forms of discrimination, operates systematically. This means sexism is not simply one or a few individuals committing acts of discrimination. It means sexism is a learned behavior reinforced daily by education, all forms of media and in some cases, laws. Women are not earning 76 cents to each dollar earned by a man because her employer is sexist — it is instead because we live in a society that places men at a higher value than women.
In fact, Ryan said it himself. According to his article, a woman’s competitive wage is lower, implying that a man’s labor is worth more. The only way to truly empower women is not to embrace a political ideology, whether right-winged or left-winged. Instead, we need to stop thinking about human beings as units of economic value. We need to start thinking of women and men not as opposites which are intrinsically different from each other, but as human beings who are valuable because all humans are valuable.
