Hair equity
I can't stand it.
It's a private member's bill, so it probably won't pass. But then again it passed second reading, I'm guessing with all-party support, so anything's possible. Here's what this loony bill supposes. It supposes that every hairstylist, every drycleaner and every drugstore in the province is engaged in a massive price-fixing conspiracy designed to prop up the prices of women's goods and services above those of their male equivalents. They'd have to be: otherwise, any one of them could steal market share from the others by dropping their prices, and once one did the others would have to follow. By male "equivalents," I'm supposing there are such things: goods or services that cost the same to produce, but are marketed to men rather than to women. I'm supposing this, because I'm supposing that even the author of this bill would not be so crazy as to say that things that cost different amounts to produce should be priced the same. But if that's true -- if all these small businesses are conspiring to prop up the prices of women's goods and services at higher margins than they would earn on comparable goods and services for men -- then a further supposition is in order. We must suppose that some retailers are voluntarily forgoing the higher profits available on women's shirts, haircuts etc, in order to offer the same thing to men at a discount. That's generous of them. But now suppose all this is outlawed. And suppose that in fact it does cost more to cut a woman's hair than a man's -- but that henceforth hairstylists must, by provincial decree, charge the same for both. Why would anyone cut a woman's hair at that point? In the time it takes you to cut one woman's hair, you could have cut two men -- and, under the new law, got paid twice as much. This insanity will now go to public hearings. Let me predict what will happen. The media will have a field day. The Tories, anxious as ever to show how "moderate" they are, will offer only token resistance, perhaps even support it, with revisions. It will go on the books, and once there it will never be removed. How do I know this? Because, almost twenty years after it was introduced, "equal pay for work of equal value" -- the whole crackpot system of assessing the "worth" of differents jobs against whatever yardstick the consultants have at hand -- is still the law in Ontario.
A movement in Ontario to make it a human rights violation to charge women more than men for haircuts, toiletries and dry cleaning picked up steam Thursday. The legislature approved in principle a Canadian first: a bill that would fine merchants up to $5,000 for asking more to trim women's hair than men's or more to dry clean a blouse than a shirt.
It's a private member's bill, so it probably won't pass. But then again it passed second reading, I'm guessing with all-party support, so anything's possible. Here's what this loony bill supposes. It supposes that every hairstylist, every drycleaner and every drugstore in the province is engaged in a massive price-fixing conspiracy designed to prop up the prices of women's goods and services above those of their male equivalents. They'd have to be: otherwise, any one of them could steal market share from the others by dropping their prices, and once one did the others would have to follow. By male "equivalents," I'm supposing there are such things: goods or services that cost the same to produce, but are marketed to men rather than to women. I'm supposing this, because I'm supposing that even the author of this bill would not be so crazy as to say that things that cost different amounts to produce should be priced the same. But if that's true -- if all these small businesses are conspiring to prop up the prices of women's goods and services at higher margins than they would earn on comparable goods and services for men -- then a further supposition is in order. We must suppose that some retailers are voluntarily forgoing the higher profits available on women's shirts, haircuts etc, in order to offer the same thing to men at a discount. That's generous of them. But now suppose all this is outlawed. And suppose that in fact it does cost more to cut a woman's hair than a man's -- but that henceforth hairstylists must, by provincial decree, charge the same for both. Why would anyone cut a woman's hair at that point? In the time it takes you to cut one woman's hair, you could have cut two men -- and, under the new law, got paid twice as much. This insanity will now go to public hearings. Let me predict what will happen. The media will have a field day. The Tories, anxious as ever to show how "moderate" they are, will offer only token resistance, perhaps even support it, with revisions. It will go on the books, and once there it will never be removed. How do I know this? Because, almost twenty years after it was introduced, "equal pay for work of equal value" -- the whole crackpot system of assessing the "worth" of differents jobs against whatever yardstick the consultants have at hand -- is still the law in Ontario.
4/14/2005
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