Conservatism decoded: Behind the Chamber of Commerce attack on gender pay equity this week

by: Paul Rosenberg

Fri Aug 20, 2010 at 15:00

I'd like to do a quick run-through, for any who might have missed it, and then dig down a bit deeper into the Chambers essential use of "choice" as a means for rationalizing inequality.  In the law review article, "Blame Frame: Justifying (Racial) Injustice in America", Jon and Kathleen Hanson explain that "choice" is one of the three most prominent rationalizations that have historically been used to justify the enormous gap between our abstract ideology of equality and the cold hard facts of injustice.  Although their focus is on racial injustice, it fits just as nicely with this example of gender injustice as well.

But first to the blow-by blow:

The Chamber Soils Its Pot

Think Progress did a pretty good job of capturing how it started:

Chamber Blames Women For Pay Gap: They Should Choose The Right 'Place To Work' And 'Partner At Home'

Today is the anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which granted the right to vote to women. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has decided to use this day of equal rights for women to argue that women are now to blame for unequal pay in the workplace. On the organization's official blog, ChamberPost, Senior Director of Communications Brad Peck today makes the argument that the pay gap between men and women in the American workforce - women currently earn roughly 77 cents to every dollar a man earns - is "the result of individual choice rather than discrimination." He argues that, instead of bold legislative action being taken to help correct this pay gap, women should pick the "obvious, immediate, power-of-the-individual solution: choosing the right place to work and choosing the right partner at home":

Most of the current "pay gap" is the result of individual choice rather than discrimination. [...]

It is true that culturally speaking women are more likely to have to make the tough choices about work-life balance. But as we all seek to fit our values into a dynamic 24/7 economy, let's not overlook the obvious, immediate, power-of-the-individual solution: choosing the right place to work and choosing the right partner at home.

Peck's argument that women could close the pay gap by simply choosing jobs in better paying fields and marrying wealthier men is based on a faulty premise - that the pay gap in the United States between genders exists because women choose to work for less and men choose to work for more.

While it's true that women sometimes migrate into fields that have lower pay, what Peck ignores is that even within the same occupation, women are paid less. For example, data collected by the Census Bureau in 2007 shows that "female secretaries...earn just 83.4% as much as male ones" and female truck drivers "earn just 76.5% of the weekly pay of their male counterparts." A report put out this year by the University of Minnesota finds that women in that state are "are paid $11,000 dollars less each year than men with the same jobs." A 2007 American Association of University Women report compared men and women with similar "hours, occupation, parenthood, and other factors normally associated with pay" and found that "college-educated women still earn less than their male peers earn"; the report concludes that workplace discrimination is the culprit in the wage gap.

And Michael Whitney's takedown at FDL included this handy-dandy recapitulation of the some of the Chamber's greatest hits against women:

UPDATE: In case you were wondering if this was a one-off incident, rest assured: the US Chamber of Commerce really hates women.

• 1977: US Chamber opposes amendment to Civil Rights Act that would ban discrimination against pregnant women.
  
• 1978: US Chamber says pregnancy is a "voluntary" condition in its opposition to Pregnancy Discrimination Act.
  
• 1987: Family Medical Leave Act "sets a dangerous precedent," according to the US Chamber.
  
• 1998: US Chamber opposes Equal Pay Act because "work experience does tend to create greater wage gaps."
  
• 2007: US Chamber opposes Lilly Ledbetter's court case for equal pay because "tear-stained testimony" prejudices against a defendant. Opposed the bill in Congress to right the wrongs against Ledbetter in 2008 and 2009 as well.
  
• 2007: Chamber official pledges "all out war" against Family Medical Leave Act, and in 2010 made it a "priority" to fight in Congress.
  
• Monday: US Chamber again cites pregnancy as a "voluntary choice."

Brad Peck isn't just speaking out of his ass here. He's continuing a decades-long tradition at the US Chamber of Commerce of hating women and opposing any effort to gain equal ground.

When the Chamber did beat a hasty retreat, with its COO proudly claiming that he, not some lowly blogger, spoke for the Chamber,  Whitney re-posted the above list, arguing as a lead-in that:

I have a feeling that Brad Peck will be dismissed, fired, or decide to go spend more time with his family. That shouldn't happen. Punishing Peck for his post would allow the Chamber to erroneously claim that its culture, its politics, and indeed, its very core, doesn't represent the intent of Peck's post. Indeed, I'd argue that Peck's argument that women wanting equal pay have a "fetish for money" and that they should "choose the right partner at home" is the very essence of the Chamber's ideology. From my original post....

So, that's the week's melodrama in a nutshell.  Now on to the deeper story behind it all....

Conservatism Decoded: "Choice" As Part of the Conservative Blame Frame

One of the greatest puzzlements in American politics is the incoherent nature of conservatism.  The majority of American conservatives are social conservatives, who want government to actively promote a specific moral vision--their own, naturally.  Most of these, in turn, are religiously based, but some, such as former Secretary of Education William Bennett, are cultural conservatives. They favor tough laws controlling certain types of behavior--historically, everything from dancing to marriage.  But this is not generally a particularly attractive philosophy, even if it can gain majority support for one or another particular prohibitions or restrictions.  Instead, the exact opposite philosophy is more generally attractive in the abstract--that of the libertarian conservatives, whose numbers are none-the-less significantly smaller.  

Conservatives have long tried to resolve this fundamental contradiction, with a singular lack of success that should hardly be surprising.   What is surprising, though, is that these two fundamentally opposed tendencies have continued to coexist for long.  Sure, conservatives are not all that interested in logical consistency.  Humans in general can tolerate quite a bit of incongruity, and conservatives can handle more than their fair share. But this contradiction is so massive and so fundamental that it really does seem to demand some sort of explanation.  I've puzzled over this for a very long time, and the best explanation I've found is perhaps best articulated by Jon and Kathleen Hanson in their paper, "Blame Frame: Justifying (Racial) Injustice in America".

It's no accident that the frameworks they describe have direct relevance to gender injustice as well. Indeed, while their specific focus is narrower than general ideology, it is none-the-less broad enough to address the core essence of the contradiction I'm concerned with, and to do so with surprising elegance.  First, they note that a concern with justice is particularly important, especially given America's ideology "of equality and freedom"--but that this clashes with the reality of persistent and recurrent inequality and injustice.  Second, they note social science research showing that when justice cannot be achieved, there is a tendency to "blame the victim".  Third, they note that there are three main explanatory strategies for victim-blaming, the "god frame", the "nature frame" and the "choice frame". We can readily recognize the the god frame and the choice frame as representing core aspects of social conservatism and libertarian conservatism, respectively, while the nature frame is more fluid and adaptable, capable of working in tandem with either of the other two frames, providing a bridge between them, or even salving the conscience of lapsed liberals, such as Third Way types.

In a footnote, they take note of three other frames that often overlap and coexist with these three:  history/custom/tradition/precedent schema (the traditional values frame), the healthy/normal versus diseased/deviant schema (the normalcy frame, and the /leader schema (the culture frame). All these frames are similar in that they legitimate significant inequality by victim-blaming. Whatever the rationale for conservatism may be, this is its essential core, and the reason that seemingly incompatible rationales can work together.

(The paper itself argues that over the course of the 20thCentury the choice frame has emerged as the dominant blame frame--blacks are poorer in general because they have made bad choices--but that Katrina was the kind of extraordinary event that presented us with stark, undeniable evidence of situational factors beyond individual control, thus (temporarily, at least) disabling the choice blame frame.  It's a very insightful and revealing paper, with a lot more to say than I'm going to touch on here.)

The Social Science Evidence

The basic social science evidence on blame framing comes from social psychologist Melvin Lerner:

In a series of experiments, Lerner demonstrated that people crave justice and, consistent with that craving, actively work to eliminate injustice. Lerner also discovered, however, that we often satisfy the craving through troubling means: when alleviating innocent suffering is at all difficult or complex, people reconceive the victim as deserving the suffering by assigning negative characteristics to her. In a typical experiment, subjects were told they were observing a study of learning techniques. As the subjects watched, a volunteer learner appeared to suffer painful shocks as punishment for incorrect answers. One group of subjects was offered a choice either to reassign the learner to a different study with positive reinforcements (monetary rewards) for correct answers, or to allow the punishing electric jolts to continue. A second group of subjects was given no reassignment option?they could only observe helplessly as the learner apparently continued to be shocked for incorrect answers. Afterwards, the subjects were questioned about the person who had supposedly been shocked.

The first group, which had the easy, officially sanctioned option of ending the victim's suffering, typically opted to do so.13 That should be unsurprising; after all, what kind of person would not put a stop to undeserved suffering? In a later debriefing, subjects in that first group tended to describe the learners as likeable, innocent victims of shocks who deserved to be reassigned to a positive reinforcement environment. But the second group of subjects, who were not given an option to end the learner's suffering, took a less obvious path to justice. Rather than describing the learner as an innocent victim worthy of sympathy and compensation, these subjects tended to disparage and the victim. "The sight of an innocent person suffering . . . motivated people to devalue the attractiveness of the victim in order to bring about a more appropriate fit between her fate and her character."

Lerner's results powerfully illustrate two ways in which individuals cope when witnessing suffering: we stop the injustice, or we justify it by conceiving of the victim as a person who actually "deserves" to suffer. Thus is revealed one of the sources of our great confusion: we abhor, not injustice, but the dissonance that perceived injustice creates within us. Put an-other way, it is not justice that we crave so much as the perception of justice.

And that craving can often be satisfied far more easily by changing our perception of the victims than by acknowledging and addressing the underlying unfairness.

I actually see things somewhat differently than the Hansons.  I think that people really do crave justice.  But for a variety of different reasons we face difficulties in realizing what we desire.  In the above study, then the structure allowed for people to act as they saw fit, there was a strong tendency to undo an unjust situation.  But when that option was foreclosed, that was when the preference for perceived justice asserted itself.  This is but one reason that I would argue that the essence of political radicalism is the challenging of the status quo in part precisely because the status quo tends to limit and thwart our most noble instincts, values and intuitions, including those that lead to social justice for all.

Despite what they wrote here, I actually think that the Hansons may agree with me more than not, but it's an important point to take note of, either way.

The Evidence of Ideology

Shifting from the laboratory level to that of ideology, the authors write:

Much as with Lerner's subjects, Americans' basic attributional framework for justifying inequalities or suffering has been to blame the victims and excuse the non-victims. Outcomes are just in that the powerful are rewarded for their exemplary dispositions while the victims pay the price for their wayward dispositions. In narrative form, the blame frame often
sounds something like this:

"We," who should be advantaged, are acting, if at all, through good intentions, exemplary dispositions, and in accordance with situational forces larger than us.50 "They," because of their aberrant dispositions interacting with or resulting from those same forces, should suffer or be further disadvantaged or separated from us and should not receive our assistance.

That basic blame frame been fleshed out in various incarnations, which have at times vied for dominance, but have nonetheless managed to coexist, often peacefully, throughout most of American history.

As already noted, the three main examples are the God frame:

The God/devil schema ("God frame"): Under this frame, outcomes reflect not individual choices, but the presence or absence of God's grace/will/plan, or, more menacingly, the possessive influence of the devil or other demonic forces. A person's behavior and place in society are evidence of his godly or ungodly disposition.52 When those in power act to advantage their group but harm (or fail to help) others, the God schema excuses such actions as a situationally determined aspect of God's will or plan, beyond the control of the most powerful mortal.

The nature frame:

The evolution/nature/biology schema ("nature frame"): Under this frame, outcomes are dictated not (only) by the divine, but (also) by certain genes or inherited qualities. This hereditary baggage makes a person "fit" or "unfit," where fitness is measured either generally or specifically for particular roles, activities, or spheres. The expression of determinative genes is evidenced in people's behavior, wealth, and living conditions; their place in society reveals their position in nature's hierarchy. And when those in power act to advantage their group, while harming others, those actions are situationally excused as consistent with nature's laws and desirable evolutionary processes.

and the choice frame:

The markets/preference-, personality-, or character-based choice schema ("choice frame"): According to this narrative, outcomes reflect the choices of individuals, which in turn reflect the individualized preferences (or perhaps character) of each person or group. People's behavior, wealth, living conditions, and position in society reveal their preferences, tastes, identities, and ability to make good choices. When those in power act to advantage their own group but harm others, the choice frame excuses those actions as situationally determined by market forces or autonomous individuals' votes or choices?any other outcome would impede or ignore the preferences of people entitled to choose for themselves.

The "choice frame" is, of course, particularly effective the less that you question the status quo, and how the current set of available choices came to be. Just why, exactly, is there no choice for ending needless suffering?

Such are the sorts of questions that only uppity women would ask.

Addressing the three blame frames collectively, the authors write:

God. Nature. Choice. Although each schema frames the human animal differently, they all rely upon, or purport to emerge from, a normatively effective and legitimate mechanism or process?one invisible hand or another. Because the mechanism is cloaked in some ultimate touchstone of truth?be it divine inspiration, science, or market success?good and valuable are sorted from bad and costly, and any misgivings about the fairness of outcomes are allayed.

Individually and collectively, those power-affirming blame frames and others like them* have served to justify systemic inequalities and suffering. They have rendered palatable many customs, laws, and institutions that we Americans might otherwise have branded oppressive. Operating largely subconsciously, blame frames are our secret palliative?a coping mechanism for times when the dissonance between reality and ideals threatens to overwhelm what we so desperately wish to see. It is these persistent, pervasive, and robust blame frames that make our great confusion possible: they minimize the chasm we otherwise would have to face between our shared experiences and our common, deeply held values of "liberty," "justice," and "equality."

This, then, is the underlying essence of what conservative ideology is all about.  It's why the Chamber of Commerce's record of arguments against gender equality is what it is, and why it would be truly shocking if that record were any different than it is.

* Three additional blame frames are mentioned in a footnote. Not coincidentally, readers here will have no difficulty at all recognizing how these are also often used against women's equality. First, The traditional values frame:

The history/custom/tradition/precedent schema (the "traditional values frame"): Outcomes reflect the extent to which individuals or groups comply with or deviate from historical lessons, practices, and values that are leading (or led in some prior golden age) to progress and idealized behavior.

The normalcy frame:

The healthy/normal versus diseased/deviant schema (the "normalcy frame"): Outcomes reflect the extent to which individuals or groups have a normal/healthy constitution, or a diseased/deviant constitution.

and the culture frame:

The culture/leader schema (the "culture frame"): Outcomes reflect the merits of a group's presumed basic, shared disposition (often called "culture"); salient differences in dress, language, music, customs, and so on are manifestations of the underlying cultural or leadership problem for the disadvantaged group. The more powerful and advantaged groups enjoy the rewards of their superior cultural norms and institutions, while disadvantaged groups must find a way to change their culture (or leaders) to conform with the dominant or accept their oppressed role.