At the time, the United States Senate
Judiciary Committee, acting under pressure, had called Professor Anita Hill to
testify about the nomination of Clarence Thomas for Supreme Court Justice.
The radio was turned up loud, and Anita Hill's voice was riveting. The
calm, steady sound of her speaking flowed through everyone's life like a river.
And then her voice was filtered through the responses of the senators and their
expert witnesses. I remembered the two-step process of listening to Anita Hill
-- hearing her, and then hearing her not being heard.
— Carol Gilligan, Getting Civilized, Fordham Law Review (Special Issue on
Women and the Law, 1994).
The economic
theory of regulation, or Public Choice theory, asserts that Congress uses legislation
to broker wealth transfers from the unorganized public to discrete and
organized interest groups. Jonathan R. Macey, Some Causes and Consequences of the Bifurcated Treatment of Economic
Rights and “Other” Rights Under the United States Constitution, in Economic Rights 141 (Ellen Frankel
Paul, et al. eds. 1992). Under this theory, laws are commodities that Congress “sells” to private
interest groups. The “currencies” paid to politicians for those laws are “political
support, promises of future favors, outright bribes, and whatever else
politicians value”. Id. at
155-157. For such wealth transfers,
politicians endure low costs: the poorly informed public is unlikely to
withdraw their political support, especially if politicians suggest harmful
legislation actually advances the public’s interest. Since politicians stand to
gain a great deal without enduring great costs, they have an enormous incentive
to broker wealth transfers for the benefit of organized private interest
groups.
Here is the feminist
question: what does the economic theory of regulation suggest about the welfare
of women in our political system?
Many feminist
legal theorists have argued that women have a different voice than men. See e.g., Elizabeth M. Schneider, Hearing Women Not Being Heard: On Carol
Gilligan’s Getting Civilized and the Complexity of Voice, Fordham Law Review (Special Issue on
Women and the Law, 1994). Assuming women share an overarching voice, women’s
interests and concerns sometimes will overlap with those of men, and sometimes will
not. For those different issues that are of particular concern to women, men
are not the best advocates. The problem is, however, that men dominate
positions of power in the public sphere.
According to
Public Choice theory, the main players of law making are politicians and
private interest groups. It is therefore imperative that women are represented
in Congress and among lobbyists. Sadly, that is not the case. Today, women hold
16.8
percent of the seats in Congress. Women’s representation is even worse
among private interest groups: top lobbying firms that “actually
control the show” on Capitol Hill are still run by men. Of the top 30 trade
associations that lobbied during the Obama administration, only
four were led by female CEOs. Even more gloomy is that fact that lobbying
groups literally value women less
than men in their leadership: top male CEOs of lobbying firms in 2010 were
paid $1 million dollars more than their female counterparts. The fear that women’s
voices are being crowded out by the voice of men in politics is neither delusion
nor paranoia.
The first type
of “currency” paid to politicians for legislative wealth transfers is political
support from financial contributors. The federal political campaigns of
2011-2012 generated over $2.5 billion
in contributions from interest groups. These included the campaigns of
presidential and congressional candidates. Different sectors of political
interest groups did not contribute equally. Of those $2.5 billion in contributions,
over half came from five industries: financial, insurance, real estate,
lawyers, lobbyists, construction, energy and natural resources, agribusiness,
and other miscellaneous business sectors. These are market sectors that are
typically dominated by men, and therefore are void of the “woman’s voice.”
These masculine “buyers” of laws are less likely to consider the concerns of
women as they try to influence legislation. At the same time, sectors that have
greater representation of women made fewer contributions. Less than 30 per cent
of contributions were made by the education, health and labor sectors.
Moreover, even within sectors, the power of political influence was unevenly
distributed among sector members. Large contributions were made by very
discrete organized private interest groups. Goldman Sachs contributed an astonishing $7 million. The City of New York alone contributed $3.4 million.
The only people who
spends more money than campaign contributors to influence politics are
lobbyists. Spending over $30 billion in the last decade, lobbyists offer the
second type of currency paid to politicians: information and technical support, in addition to campaign contributions
of their own. Today, there are over 12,000 lobbyists
in the United States. The biggest spender is the US Chamber of Commerce, having
already spent a total of $95.7 million so far this year, and representing the
interests of over three million businesses.
The Chamber is a
powerful lobbying group that was established in the 1910s. Their mission is to
advance enterprise in America. While a healthy economy is certainly in the best
interest of all Americans, it cannot be the greatest or sole interest of
Americans. Since the biggest spender on Capitol Hill can “purchase” more wealth
transfers than anyone else, the interest of the Chamber will likely have huge
political influence – even if such a transfer would harm many Americans.
A brief
historical review of some of the Chamber’s activities demonstrates how the
advancement of enterprise sometimes requires wealth transfers to be made from
the poor and the marginalized to the rich and the powerful. In 1934, the
Chamber “strongly opposed legislation…that would strengthen the ability of
labor unions to organize workers.” Four years later, “over President
Roosevelt’s veto” the Chamber provided “strong support” when Congress “reduced corporate income
taxes.” Most recently, in 2010, the Chamber “oppose[d] the overall legislation” of the health care reform act. The
Chamber has worked hard to divest Americans of their economic rights in the
pursuit of enterprise.
If we, as women,
want a say in politics, we better have pockets as deep as the Chamber does. But
since no one has pockets as deep as the Chamber does, our best bet is to ensure
that the voice of women is integrated into the Chamber’s leadership and the
Chamber’s beneficiaries (that is, American businesses). As it stands, however,
woman’s voice has been astonishingly absent.
Women are
severely underrepresented in the US Chamber of Commerce. It wasn’t until 1944 that
women were appointed to chamber committees. But who is
running the show today over at the US Chamber of Commerce? Among the 134
members of the board of directors, only 11
are women (most of whom
are white women). That’s only eight
percent. None were executive board members.
Women are also
underrepresented in businesses nationwide. In 2007, women owned 7.8 million nonfarm businesses in the United States (compared to the
13.9 million owned by men). Relegated to feminine spaces, women are most
competitive in the more feminine service sectors. Women-owned firms made up 45 percent
of the “repair, maintenance, personal, and laundry services” industries. Even
when women are in business, they face difficulty making it into positions of
power. A recent study concluded that women are offered fewer career advancing
“hot jobs” than men;
this could be “an underlying cause of the senior-level gender gap in business.”
The results of another study put the sad truth about the political
influence of women-in-business more clearly: “women and women-owned
businesses…are excluded in Congressional Committees and committee hearings.”
While the US Chamber of Commerce appears to have a gender neutral aim (pursuit
of enterprise), women do not make the decisions about their lobbying
strategies, women are not their major beneficiaries, and women are not their feared
competitors on Capitol Hill.
Today, the
chamber continues to lobby on behalf of (male) business interests. Such private
business interests are so strictly prioritized that the Chamber “oppose[d] the overall
legislation” of the health
care reform in 2010. (Emphasis added). The Chamber managed to “eliminate key
items that would have negatively impacted the business community including the
public option.” Of course, that “business community” overwhelmingly excludes
women. Worse, women would have been harmed
if the health care law were defeated by the Chambers’ lobbying efforts. Health care reform is in the interest
of most women because women
make “80 percent of health care decisions for their families,” use “more
medical services than men,” and suffer “greater disability from chronic
disease.” The Chamber of Commerce places its private interests before those of
half the population of this country, and actively seeks to promote male
dominated business interests at the cost of women’s health.
Should the
largest lobbying group be allowed to wage a “decade-long advocacy effort for private market-based
approaches to health care reform”?
If so, then how can dispersed and unorganized groups of women, women-business
owners or medical patients generally, compete on the political market? When laws
are traded as commodities that transfer wealth from the general public to
discrete private interest groups, the politically marginalized (women and
others) become the proverbial lowly paupers whom the brokers of wealth transfers
ignore and from whom they steal.
Thanks for an enlightening, datalicious post! You posed the excellent question, "what does the economic theory of regulation suggest about the welfare of women in our political system?"
ReplyDeleteI do think that this will be a problem that lessens over time with female empowerment, education, and representation in the political sphere. This recent election fuels me with hope that women continue to gain empowerment in governmental and political roles, which combined with increasing numbers of female business-owners and CEOs, political marginalization will be a social relic of the past.
Thanks Atticus! I think you're right -- that things will change over time. But, I'm sometimes I doubt (with good reason...) that equlity is achievable. After researching for this blog, I felt a bit overwhelmed by the obstacles that stand in our way. But, I appreciate your view -- ultimately, hope is still alive.
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