How Do We Measure Gender Equality?

As I am sure most of you are aware, yesterday was International Women’s Day. This, of course, sparked a number of discussions on the necessity of feminism in Western society. This all reminded me of a previous discussion I had with an acquaintance over what is the best way to measure gender equality. Essentially, it boiled down to whether we should measure equality of representation or equality of opportunity, with my acquaintance arguing the former while I argued the latter. I wish to articulate to you all a point that I tried to impart on my discussion partner. This is that the equality of representation side has a fairly large assumption built into it; namely, that men and women are actually equal in all respects.

Before you fly off into a tirade about how much of a misogynist I am, hear me out. The debate over biological gender difference is one that it still going strong; there are points made on both sides that make it hard to come to any conclusion beyond ‘we don’t know at the moment’. For example, testosterone has been linked to aggression in both males and females and males have higher levels of testosterone simply due to being male. The counterpoint to this is that it has also been found that witnessing and emulating aggressive behaviours can increase testosterone levels. Thus, to take a position on policy (that women and men should be equally represented in all fields) is to run with a conclusion that has yet to be established. Whereas, if your policy position is to remove barriers that prevent women from access certain fields, you allow for both the possibility that men and women are and aren’t equal.

To demonstrate this point, let me present a hypothetical world. In this world, there are no cultural, social or legal barriers to either gender undertaking any task; men can be homemakers, women can be CEO’s and no one bats at eye at either choice. Now, if men and women have equal capabilities/preferences, we would of course see an equal representation of both genders in all fields. However, if there are differences between the averages of the abilities/preferences of each gender, then we would see differences in the representation of both genders. For example, women may actually as a matter of biology rather than culture be more nurturing on average than males. This would lead to an overrepresentation in fields that require a nurturing temperament (healthcare, teaching etc.). This would not be unfair; to the contrary, it would be exactly what the individuals want of their own accord.

It should be noted that I am in no way defending the status quo; there are still many barriers that prevent women from having equal access to the same opportunities that men enjoy and we should make every effort to see that they are eliminated.  My point is more that people need to point to these problems directly rather than point to the difference in representation and infer that there must be a problem because of it.

Short and Sharp - Limitiation of Liberty

I know I’ve been on a kind of ‘ethical bender’ of late, so I promise this will be my last post on ethics for a while (isn’t that what all addicts say?). However, I wish to have a final quick exploration of the topic of limiting the liberty of individuals in a society. I think that by being a member of society, we  agree (explicitly in some cases, implicitly in most) to give up certain rights, such as the right to murder each other, for the safety and benefits that living in a society offers (yes, I am a fan Hobbes, if you can’t tell; at least in regard to social contract theory). The point of this post is to explore what constitutes the line between what can and cannot be limited by society.

While this is related to my last post on bone marrow donation, I’m going to use the example of vaccination to draw out the potential points of disagreement. We all (well, the significant majority) accept the limit that we cannot kill (either intentionally or through recklessness on our part). The same is true for causing harm to others that falls short of killing them (again, both intentionally and through recklessness). So, given these two fair uncontroversial points, why do we allow people, be they adults or children by the choice of their parents, to opt out of vaccination?

For those of you not familiar with herd immunity, this is the phenomenon where when a certain portion of the population is immune to a certain disease, their immunity acts to protect those who are not immune. The percentage of immunity required to reach this threshold varies for every contagion and is based on factors like the route of infection (airborne, food etc.) and the virulence of the pathogen. Within any given population, there are a certain proportion of individuals that, for medical reasons, cannot be given vaccinations (effectively, anyone with impaired immune functions, often due to age, genetic conditions or other factors). So, with an already reduced population to work with, allowing others to opt out of vaccinations further reduces the amount that are immunised, putting everyone at an increased risk of infection.

My point is not that vaccination should be mandatory (I do think that, but that is not the case I am making here), but what reasons are there that we don’t make them mandatory? I’ve heard people suggest that it is to do with liberty, but as I’ve already said, we given up liberties all the time to benefit from living in a society. Does doing something to people rather than asking them not to do something change the issue (positive vs. negative liberty)? Does removing the option to opt out change anything for people who would have chosen to be vaccinated regardless? What is the threshold for what constitutes a significant harm of an action to the public as to reduce the liberty of individuals to undertake said action?