Wendy McElroy: "Equality of Opportunity, Not of Outcome"

Article here. Excerpt:

'Quebec Senator Céline Hervieux-Payette wants to force corporations, parent Crown corporations and some financial institutions to have their boards of directors include at least 40 per cent women. She is reintroducing a private member’s bill into the Senate to remedy what she views as proof positive of discrimination against women. (A Financial Post survey found that women comprised 14 per cent of directors at the 500 largest corporations in 2009.)

Critics of Ms. Hervieux-Payette’s plan will bristle at further extending government into private sector decisions. They will point accusingly to the decline in productivity that would result from business decisions based on gender, not merit. Braver voices may even whisper that it is women who are currently privileged under law; it is men who are falling behind.

But if the past is prelude, the critics will fall silent at precisely the moment they should speak out most loudly. This is the moment at which the ‘gender justice’ card is played. A quota system is necessary, it will be argued, because discrimination against women runs rampant throughout Canadian society. Gender justice demands that business elites be forced to pry open ‘their clubhouse’ door and rectify centuries of exclusion.
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Why is the stripping of rights from one segment of society in order to enrich another called justice? Why is violating freedom of association seen as morality? The words have been twisted away from their original meaning so that justice requires the violation of rights and morality resides in government making our personal decisions.'

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