The unconventional wisdom

Women's Quarterly, Spring, 2003 by Ellen Ladowsky, Rael Jean Isaac, R. Gaull Silberman

That's No White Male, That's My Husband!

Ellen Ladowsky explains why women will deliver the death blow to affirmative action.

THE DIMINISHING RETURNS of affirmative action are particularly felt by young women entering the work force. By now the formal and informal barriers that once kept women out of many fields have come down. The white female college graduate is likely to face the same employment problems that have confronted her male classmates for the past decade: a limited number of slots, competition for promotions, and the denial of jobs because of "set-asides" for minority applicants.

Even in the instances when women are still hired to meet a quota, it is not always to redress perceived discrimination--quite the opposite. It can be a way of circumventing requirements for a minority candidate. A philosophy professor at a small, elite college told me that it is common practice for academic departments to hire women to meet affirmative action guidelines because, "We have trouble finding qualified minority candidates but it is easy to find a qualified woman."...

Woman's advancement in the workplace, then, seems indisputable. Yet should affirmative action get all the credit? Some researchers say no. "My own sense of the data," says Frederick R. Lynch, "is that primarily it's cultural change and enforcement of non-discrimination, not necessarily preferential treatment."

The final undoing of affirmative action in women's minds, however, may not stem from consideration of their own careers. Women know the men who have been victims of affirmative action's reverse discrimination or men who consider themselves to be victims. They are their husbands, brothers, or sons. Non-working women--or women temporarily out of the workforce to raise children--count on their husbands' salaries and promotions to support their families. "The angriest people [I interviewed] were the wives of men who had suffered reverse discrimination," says Lynch.

This "stand by your man" factor may turn out to be the force that causes female voters to reject affirmative action-first in California, and then across the nation.

~ Spring 1995

On the Backs of Women

Rael Jean Isaac shows how high-living union officials exploit women.

WHEN NEW YORK power broker Charles Hughes traveled abroad, he took along his nearest and dearest. His entourage for a jaunt to Egypt, Prague, London, and Paris numbered fourteen family members. Hughes also threw legendary Christmas parties at swank New York hotels, which featured such Lucullan treats as roast suckling pig and sides of beef; there were rock bands, too, and one year Hughes hired a circus to entertain.

Hughes was a New York union boss. Unfortunately, his lifestyle was made possible by a little-noticed form of the abuse of women: exploitation of women in low-paying jobs by high-living union officials. Accused by New York City's D.A.'s office of corruption, Hughes finally pleaded guilty, in April, to stealing $2 million from Local 372, which represents school cafeteria workers and crossing guards, the majority of whom are women....

Clarice Wilson is the flip side of the Charles Hughes saga: A black, single mother--now a grandmother--Wilson has been a member of Local 983, which represents motor vehicle drivers, for eight years. As a civilian employee of the police department, she daily tours construction sites throughout the five boroughs looking for violations. Over the years Wilson's dues have added up to around $3,500.

For the privilege of being represented by Hughes, a cafeteria worker making around $11,000 a year paid union dues of $600. Hughes' local is one of fifty-six New York locals that make up New York's District Council 37, which, in turn, is part of the powerful American Federation of State, City, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the nation's second largest labor union.

What did she get for her money? When Wilson was required to work overtime without being paid for it, she sent an SOS to Local 983; the union did not even bother to respond. "All that was necessary was for the union to sit down with management one on one to rectify that," she told me. "But when I'd call, it was always, 'He's not here. Can I take a message?' and they never got back to me." When she went to complain in person, there was nobody in the office but a secretary.

Summer 2000

Sexual Harassment

R. Gaull Silberman on a combustible subject

THE ISSUE of what sexual harassment is and what should be done about it has, from its beginning, been a combustible mixture of politics, law, and sex. Conceived by radical feminists in academia, the doctrine was legally born in a 1981 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) regulation which was reviewed by the Supreme Court four years later in Mentor Savings Bank v. Vinson. Clarence Thomas, then-chairman of the EEOC, and I had seen the nasty reality of sexual harassment in horrific cases brought to the commission. With women entering the workplace in greater and greater numbers, we thought it a matter of good public policy that the government defend the guidelines which provided necessary protection for working women.