Assumptions

In his ongoing quest to give migraines to Cassandra, James Taranto has written again about women and the workplace. His argument isn't the one that interests me, though, but the one to which he is responding.

The headline is a grabber: "Female Ivy League Graduates Have a Duty to Stay in the Workforce." In the piece itself, Goff actually stops well short of endorsing that position wholeheartedly. She acknowledges that "most sane and fair people can agree that any woman has the right to make whatever choice she believes is best for her family--whether that is choosing to stay home full-time or work outside of the home," but in the same sentence she suggests that "women have a definite responsibility to make choices for the good of all women, such as putting an elite degree to use outside of the home."

Similarly, Goff disavows the belief "that every woman should be made to feel as though [she] must choose between being committed to [her] children or committed to the sisterhood of women's advancement," then in the next sentence affirms that a woman with a Harvard Law School degree who forgoes a lengthy professional career has "wasted" an "opportunity."

What I'm curious about is this assumption by Goff that women in the workplace can be assumed to be, even in part, doing something that advances "the good of all women." That could be true, but why ought it to be assumed?

There are lots of men who get degrees from Ivy League schools, but it has never occurred to me to think that their degrees do me (or men generally) any good. In fact, the opposite is true: men ordinarily think of other men as competition, and so a man obtaining an advanced degree from a school with a high reputation means that my opportunities are in a certan sense going to decrease, not increase. This is because any job that we might compete for he is more likely to obtain, given the respect his credentials will enjoy.

That is not necessarily true, of course: he could use the knowledge gained while seeking his degree to start a business that could employ me, and that would increase my opportunities. But entrepreneurs don't usually require advanced degrees, let alone from famous schools: given the expense of obtaining such a credential, most seekers understandably put it to use in competition for positions in government, finance, or in universities. That's where the big advantages of high starting pay favor them most. So normally, then, a man (or a woman) who gets an Ivy League degree is occupying a space that is then not available for others to occupy.

Of course, there's a sense in which whatever they do (apart from government), they're contributing to an economy whose expansion increases opportunities for everyone. But if you're a man (or woman) who wants a job, the less competition the better -- and the fewer people with Ivy League degrees seeking the job you want, the more likely you will get it.

Now, Goff might be arguing that women have a duty to get into positions to hire and promote women; but of course discriminating in favor of women is illegal, so surely she doesn't mean to advocate for that. After all, a business who made it a policy to hire and promote only or especially men would be in danger of large lawsuits. Certainly she can't be advocating for women who obtain such positions to put their company at risk. That would be a violation of their duty to their employers.

It used to be said that women being present at all in a job opened opportunities for women, simply because getting their first made the point that women could do it. Surely, though, that is at least a generation past: there aren't any jobs left in the economy that women don't do, except the ones they don't choose to do. We haven't had a female President, but not because anyone thinks we couldn't possibly have one: rather, it is only because Democrats in 2004 preferred then-Senator Obama to then-Senator Clinton. If she had won the Democratic primary that year, it is all but certain she would have been elected to the Presidency.

So maybe Goff's assumption is outdated. It could be the mark of a true equality if women began to regard other women with advanced degrees the same way they think of the men who compete with them: as competitors out for their own good, and if hired, the good of their employer. Expecting them to help you is an expectation misplaced. Not only will they probably not, they probably ought not. Their duties in the market lie elsewhere.