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In the labor market and workplace, anti-discrimination rules,
affirmative action policies, and pay equity procedures exercise a
direct effect on gender relations. But what can be done to
influence the ways that men and women allocate tasks and
responsibilities at home? In Gender Equality, Volume VI in the Real
Utopias series, social scientists Janet C. Gornick and Marcia K.
Meyers propose a set of policies--paid family leave provisions,
working time regulations, and early childhood education and
care--designed to foster more egalitarian family divisions of labor
by strengthening men's ties at home and women's attachment to paid
work. Their policy proposal is followed by a series of
commentaries--both critical and supportive--from a group of
distinguished scholars, and a concluding essay in which Gornick and
Meyers respond to a debate that is a timely and valuable
contribution to egalitarian politics.
Volume V in the acclaimed Real Utopias Project series, edited by
Erik Olin Wright. Are there ways that contemporary capitalism can
be rendered a dramatically more egalitarian economic system without
destroying its productivity and capacity for growth? This book
explores two proposals, unconditional basic income and stakeholder
grants, that attempt just that. In a system of basic income, as
elaborated by Philippe van Parijs, all citizens are given a monthly
stipend sufficient to provide them with a no-frills but adequate
standard of living. This monthly income is universal rather than
means-tested, and it is unconditional - receiving the basic income
does not depend upon performing any labor services or satisfying
other conditions. It affirms the idea that as a matter of basic
rights, no one should live in poverty in an affluent society. In a
system of stakeholder grants, as discussed by Bruce Ackerman and
Anne Alstott, all citizens upon reaching the age of early adulthood
receive a substantial one-time lump-sum grant sufficiently large so
that all young adults would be significant wealth holders. Ackerman
and Alstott propose that this grant be in the vicinity of $80,000
and be financed by an annual wealth tax of roughly 2 percent. A
system of stakeholder grants, they argue, "expresses a fundamental
responsibility: every American has an obligation to contribute to a
fair starting point for all."
At a time when quotas and preferences are under attack nationwide,
Barbara Bergmann courageously show that without the help of
affirmative action America will never be able to attain a truly
race-blind and sex-blind society, for it is naive to imagine that
the abolition of affirmative action will lead to a system based
solely on ability. Women and minorities do in fact need assistance
in cases where prejudice or habit leads to preference for white
males in all openings. Free of the posturing that has so often
degraded this debate, In defence of Affirmative Action is a clarion
call to maintain affirmative action as a just and indispensable
solution to a chronic problem in American society.
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