Sandra Acker; Sex Discrimination in Education: a reply to Shaw, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 15, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 107–118, https://doi.

B Shaw; Sex Discrimination in Education: theory and practice, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 13, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 33–40, https://doi.org/.

Ethical decisions are contextualized in the dialectic of a multidimensional system, including situation, setting, culture, and generation. There may be further gaps between the ethical considerations of professionals and folk values. The experience of promoting equal opportunities in Hong Kong illustrates some of these challenges. Whereas the rule of law under a Western legal system advocates human rights, the traditional emphasis on harmony and preference for balancing in conflict resolution underlie the gaps in the interpretation of these ideals. The case (...) of the Hong Kong secondary school places allocation system highlights the conflicting perspectives of law, gender stereotypes, psychological knowledge, as well as ethical principles of justice and fairness in promoting equal opportunities in educational assessment and placement. The cultural perspective highlighted in this case illustrates the complex contexts of ethical decisions. (shrink)

This paper explores the psychological phenomena of sex stereotypes and their consequences for the occurrence of sex discrimination in work settings. Differential conceptions of the attributes of women and men are shown to extend to women and men managers, and the lack of fit model is used to explain how stereotypes about women can detrimentally affect their career progress. Commonly-occurring organizational conditions which facilitate the use of stereotypes in personnel decision making are identified and, lastly, data are provided demonstrating (...) the way in which affirmative action programs and practices can act to promote the stereotyping of women suggesting, that rather than being a remedy for sex discrimination, such programs might in fact be another contributor to the problem. Conclusions focus on the importance of attending to the role sex stereotypes play in hindering women's career progress when procedures to combat sex discrimination in organizations are designed and implemented. (shrink)

In Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School District, the Supreme Court set an exacting standard for establishing institutional liability under Title IX for a teacher sexually harassing a student. That standard, rejecting the simple application of agency principles and instead requiring a student to notify the school of the harassment and then the school to be deliberately indifferent to the student's complaints, has been inconsistently applied by lower courts faced with other, non-harassment forms of sex discrimination under Title IX. (...) In other areas of the law, the Supreme Court has regularly applied well-established federal common-law agency principles to statutes when determining liability issues. This Article argues that, when faced with Title IX non-harassment claims, courts should do the same because the policy reasons that offer the only reasonable explanation of the result in Gebser are not present in cases of non-harassment sex discrimination in schools and because non-harassment sex discrimination lies at the heart of Title IX's prohibition of sex discrimination in federally funded educational institutions. (shrink)

Job evaluation systems are becoming increasingly important in Europe to counter sex‐discrimination, but evaluation criteria can themselves be discriminatory. Dr Jeanne de Bruijn is Professor in Women and Policy at the Free University of Amsterdam.

ABSTRACT The public controversy over sex‐based differentials in insurance pricing makes heavy use of terms like ‘fairness’ and ‘discrimination’; in particular, both sides argue that their position is the one dictated by considerations of fairness. Appeal to a basic principle of distributive justice shows that these differentials are not fair. Nevertheless, there is a substantial ethical argument to be made for the industry's status quo, based on the liberty of the low‐risk insurees. The paper considers an alternative reform proposal, (...) with a qualitatively different freedom cost; seven factors are then identified as useful in evaluating the trade‐off between the freedom and justice at stake in any questionable insurance classification variable. A brief concluding section attempts to generalise this analysis to provide a broad framework for the analysis of other discrimination issues. (shrink)

After China, India has the most skewed sex ratio at birth. These two Asian countries account for about 90 to 95% of the estimated 1.2 to 1.5 million missing female births annually, worldwide, due to gender-biased sex selection. To understand this extreme discrimination against girls, this article examines the gendered biopolitics embedded in population policies, new sex selection technologies, and in the social reproduction of patriarchal society. The ethical consequences of advanced reproductive technologies, which remove the moral turpitude around (...) gender-based sex selection by reformulating it into a “modern”, “scientific” endeavour, facilitating the rise of “missing girls”, make this an issue of gender justice, as noted by the World Population Report 2020. This article argues that unpacking gendered biopolitics within the household is crucial to understanding the reproduction of son preference and daughter aversion since it is here that reproduction and parenthood are subjected to biopolitical governance. We discuss how “biosocial” strategies of the household aimed at producing the “desired” and “right” family of more sons at the cost of daughters are operationalized through women’s bodies with a view to family mobility. While women and girls continue to bear the burden and costs of social reproduction that lie at the heart of the patriarchal capitalist system of accumulation, a perusal of more recent studies suggests the beginning of an equalizing trend of parental investments, especially in the health and education of daughters who are “allowed” to be born. We suggest that familial enhancement of girls’ human capital can help as a means of developing girls’ capabilities and agency, enhancing their power in the biopolitics of the family and increasing their “bio-value” in parents’ eyes. (shrink)

The California Verbal Learning Test-Second Edition, is a commonly used tool to assess episodic memory. This study analyzed learning and memory characteristics in a cognitively healthy Chinese population, as well as the effects of age, sex and education on CVLT-II factors. In total, 246 healthy people aged 20–80 years and 29 persons with multiple sclerosis were included in this study and completed the CVLT-II. Factors including total learning, learning strategy, serial position effects, short-delay free and cued recall, long-delay free (...) and cued recall, repetitions and intrusions during recall, hits and false positives of recognition, and total recognition discriminability were calculated. The effects of age, sex and education on these factors were analyzed using ANCOVA or independent two-sample t-tests and further confirmed by multiple regression analysis. The regression-based normative data were then computed by the equivalent scores method. Moreover, differences in learning and memory were compared between persons with MS and age-, sex- and education-matched healthy individuals. Most CVLT-II factors significantly differed between different age and education groups; in particular, better performance in total learning, recall, semantic clustering and recognition was observed in the younger and more educated groups than in the older and less educated groups. Male participants showed higher recency effect scores, more repetitions and fewer hits than female participants. Compared with healthy individuals, persons with MS showed extensive impairments in memory processes, such as learning, recall, learning strategy and recognition. These findings indicated that verbal learning and memory were highly dependent on age and educational level but not strongly affected by sex. The CVLT-II effectively assesses episodic memory impairment in the Chinese-speaking population. (shrink)

This paper examines the problem of selecting a number of candidates to receive a good (admission) from a pool in which there are more qualified applicants than places. I observe that it is rarely possible to order all candidates according to some relevant criterion, such as academic merit, since these standards are inevitably somewhat vague. This means that we are often faced with the task of making selections between near-enough equal candidates. I survey one particular line of response, which says (...) that we should allow our choice of borderline candidates to be guided by non-relevant criteria such as gender-balancing. I argue that this would not, as commonly objected, be a case of sex discrimination if it is to be applied either in favour of men or women. Nonetheless, I argue that such policies are problematic because they violate the demand for publicity, which is required for legitimacy and to assure everyone that discrimination has not in fact taken place. Instead, I suggest that, if we are concerned to avoid discrimination, there may be a case for using lotteries as tie-breakers, not on grounds of fairness but to prevent taint of bias. (shrink)

abstract This paper examines the problem of selecting a number of candidates to receive a good (admission) from a pool in which there are more qualified applicants than places. I observe that it is rarely possible to order all candidates according to some relevant criterion, such as academic merit, since these standards are inevitably somewhat vague. This means that we are often faced with the task of making selections between near‐enough equal candidates. I survey one particular line of response, which (...) says that we should allow our choice of borderline candidates to be guided by non‐relevant criteria such as gender‐balancing. I argue that this would not, as commonly objected, be a case of sex discrimination if it is to be applied either in favour of men or women. Nonetheless, I argue that such policies are problematic because they violate the demand for publicity, which is required for legitimacy and to assure everyone that discrimination has not in fact taken place. Instead, I suggest that, if we are concerned to avoid discrimination, there may be a case for using lotteries as tie‐breakers, not on grounds of fairness but to prevent taint of bias. (shrink)

A theory of justice for the basic structure of society may constrain though not directly govern colleges. The principle of "equal opportunity" commonly applied to jobs either does or does not apply to varsity opportunities. If it applies, it interdicts sex discrimination but, one fallacious argument notwithstanding, it states no obligation to expend resources on new teams. If it does not apply, an analogue of Rawls's difference principle may appropriately constrain inequalities between the sexes. In either case the preferences (...) of a majority of the sex affected by any inequality are pivotal in fashioning any tenable distributive policy. Those preferences are neglected by a government policy that assimilates equal opportunity to equality of (i) the ratio of male:female varsity athletes and (ii) the ratio of male:female students. It is argued that such policy rests on affirming the consequent. Its effects include misallocations of resources and overvaluation of athletics. It is argued that what should approximately be equal is competitive access, the ratio of available positions to aspirants, for each sex. Two versions of a principle of equal competitive access are proposed, the recommended one of which pertains to teams whose net consumption of resources is positive. (shrink)

This book is about how the systematic application of some basic principles of applied ethics yields some surprising and very unpopular results. In particular, Kershnar investigate three areas: sex, discrimination, and violence. The book argues that the following are some permissible in theory and practice. (1) Adult-child sex (2) Watching rape-pornography (3) State universities discriminating against women (4) The U.S. denying welfare to immigrants (5) Interrogational torture (6) Assassination In addition, the book argues that different races likely have different (...) per capita moral value and that equal opportunity is not valuable. These controversial conclusions will no doubt spur animated and thoughtful discussion amongst readers. (shrink)

Unjustifiable assumptions about sex and gender roles, the untamable potency of maleness, and gynophobic notions about women's bodies inform and influence a broad range of policy-making institutions in this society. In December 2004, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit continued this ignoble cultural pastime when they decided Everson v. Michigan Department of Corrections. In this decision, the Everson Court accepted the Michigan Department of Correction's claim that “the very manhood” of male prison guards both threatens the safety (...) of female inmates and violates the women's “special sense of privacy in their genitals” and declared that sex-specific employment policies for prison guards is not impermissibly discriminatory. I believe that the Court's decision relies on unacceptable stereotypes about sex, gender and sexuality and it significantly undermines Title VII's power to end discriminatory employment practices. (shrink)

We examine whether sex discrimination contributes to the underrepresentation of female executives in large corporations. China’s strong cultural preference for sons has made newborn boys greatly outnumber newborn girls. Using the male-to-female sex ratio at birth as the proxy for discrimination against women, we find that firms headquartered in more discriminatory areas hire fewer female executives. Even conditional on a woman reaching an executive position, she faces a higher likelihood of dismissal and receives lower compensation than her male (...) counterparts. Overall, our findings suggest that sex discrimination plays an important role in preventing women from climbing the corporate ladder. (shrink)

First published in 1985, the _Handbook for Achieving Gender Equity Through Education_ quickly established itself as the essential reference work concerning gender equity in education. This new, expanded edition provides a 20-year retrospective of the field, one that has the great advantage of documenting U.S. national data on the gains and losses in the efforts to advance gender equality through policies such as Title IX, the landmark federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education, equity programs and research. (...) Key features include:_ Expertise_ – Like its predecessor, over 200 expert authors and reviewers provide accurate, consensus, research-based information on the nature of gender equity challenges and what is needed to meet them at all levels of education._ Content Area Focus_ – The analysis of gender equity within specific curriculum areas has been expanded from 6 to 10 chapters including mathematics, science, and engineering._ Global/Diversity Focus_ – Global gender equity is addressed in a separate chapter as well as in numerous other chapters. The expanded section on gender equity strategies for diverse populations contains seven chapters on African Americans, Latina/os, Asian and Pacific Island Americans, American Indians, gifted students, students with disabilities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students. _ Action Oriented_ – All chapters contain practical recommendations for making education activities and outcomes more gender equitable. A final chapter consolidates individual chapter recommendations for educators, policymakers, and researchers to achieve gender equity in and through education._ New Material_ – Expanded from 25 to 31 chapters, this new edition includes: *more emphasis on male gender equity and on sexuality issues; *special within population gender equity challenges ; *coeducation and single sex education; *increased use of rigorous research strategies such as meta-analysis showing more sex similarities and fewer sex differences and of evaluations of implementation programs; *technology and gender equity is now treated in three chapters; *women’s and gender studies; *communication skills relating to English, bilingual, and foreign language learning; and *history and implementation of Title IX and other federal and state policies. Since there is so much misleading information about gender equity and education, this _Handbook_ will be essential for anyone who wants accurate, research-based information on controversial gender equity issues—journalists, policy makers, teachers, Title IX coordinators, equity trainers, women’s and gender study faculty, students, and parents. (shrink)

Does feminism give a much-needed voice to women in a patriarchal world? Or is the world not really patriarchal? Has feminism begun to level the playing field in a world in which women are more often paid less at work and abused at home? Or are women paid equally for the same work and not abused more at home? Does feminism support equality in education and in the military, or does it discriminate against men by ignoring such issues as (...) male-only draft registration and boys lagging behind in school? The only book of its kind, this volume offers a sharp, lively, and provocative debate on the impact of feminism on men. Warren Farrell--an international best-selling author and leader in both the early women's and current men's movements--praises feminism for opening options for women but criticizes it for demonizing men, distorting data, and undervaluing the family. In response, James P. Sterba--an acclaimed philosopher and ardent advocate of feminism--maintains that the feminist movement gives a long-neglected voice to women in a male-dominated world and that men are not an oppressed gender in today's America. Their wide-ranging debate covers personal issues, from love, sex, dating, and rape to domestic violence, divorce, and child custody. Farrell and Sterba also look through their contrasting lenses at systemic issues, from the school system to the criminal justice system; from the media to the military; and from health care to the workplace. A perfect book to get students thinking and debating, Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men? A Debate is ideal for courses in gender studies, sociology, psychology, economics, feminist philosophy, and contemporary moral issues. It is also compelling reading for anyone interested in the future of men and women. (shrink)

Excerpt from Heredity, Correlation and Sex Differences in School Abilities: Studies From the Department of Educational Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University The Relationships between the Different Abilities Involved in the Study of Arithmetic. By W. A. Fox and E. L. Thorndike. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving (...) the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Scientific networks are often credited with bringing about institutional change and professional advancement, but less attention has been paid to their instability and occasional failures. In the 1970s optimism among academic women was high as changing US policies on sex discrimination in the workplace, including higher education, seemed to promise equity. Encouraged by colleagues, Shyamala Rajender charged the University of Minnesota with sex discrimination when it failed to consider her for a tenure-track position. The widely cited case (...) of this chemist was not, however, settled easily and involved nearly a decade of university grievance procedures and litigation that grew to a class action lawsuit. As the case gained national attention and internal resistance stiffened, the clusters of women who had been encouraging flickered, faded and sometimes regrouped. A negotiated settlement (consent decree) ended Rajender’s case, and it opened the door for hundreds of others to present their grievances regarding gender discrimination. Networks and support groups proved important but also unstable for individuals who sought equity before and during the implementation of the decree. The Rajender case thus exposes the painful, balky and inevitably contentious process of fighting discrimination. It also demonstrates the power and limits of institutions and litigation, as well as the possibilities and disappointments of informal and formal women’s networks. (shrink)

A woman's right to know the contents of her own body, and to make a choice about whether to continue her pregnancy or not, should be defended against laws trying to stop prenatal sex selection, either in the developing world or in the developed world. Restrictions on women's reproductive freedom harm the interests of women and girls, and ignore myriad social policy solutions, such as education and income incentives to have girls and universal old age pensions, that provide better (...) answers to the strains of unbalanced sex ratios. The opponents of sex selection trumpet all accounts of increased discrimination against women resulting from unequal sex ratios while ignoring growing evidence of positive cultural change and women's empowerment fromwomen's enhanced marriage prospects. Opponents of sex selection reify a conservative heteronormative model of sexuality, gender roles and family structure, while arguing that unmarried men are social time bombs who can only be controlled by a wife. Eventually the social policy dilemma around sex selection will presumably be made moot since would-be parents will be able to use pre-conceptive technology to determine a conceptus's gender without abortion or in-vitro fertilization. But until the sex selection argument unravels before technological innovation, women's rights to control their bodies must be defended against laws banning - or requiring - prenatal ultrasound and abortion. (shrink)

Are there sex differences in pain? For experimentally delivered somatic stimuli, females have lower thresholds, greater ability to discriminate, higher pain ratings, and less tolerance of noxious stimuli than males. These differences, however, are small, exist only for certain forms of stimulation and are affected by many situational variables such as presence of disease, experimental setting, and even nutritive status. For endogenous pains, women report more multiple pains in more body regions than men. With no obvious underlying rationale, some painful (...) diseases are more prevalent among females, others among males and, for many diseases, symptoms differ between females and males. Sex differences in attitudes exist that affect not only reporting, coping, and responses to treatment, but also measurement and treatment. So many variables are operative, however, that the most striking feature of sex differences in reported pain experience is the apparent overall lack of them. On the other hand, deduction from known biological sex differences suggests that these are powerful sex differences in the operation of pain mechanisms. First, the vaginal canal provides an additional route in women for internal trauma and invasion by pathological agents that puts them at greater risk for developing hyperalgesia in multiple body regions. Second, sex differences in temporal patterns are likely to give rise to sex differences in how pain is and stimuli are interpreted, a situation that could lead to a greater variability and wider range of pains without obvious peripheral pathology among females. Third, sex differences in the actions of sex hormones suggest pain-relevant differences in the operation of many neuroactive agents, opiate and nonopiate systems, nerve growth factor, and the sympathetic system. Thus, while inductive analysis of existing data demonstrate more similarities than differences in pain experience between females and males, deductive analysis suggests important operational sex differences in its production. (shrink)

The term 'sexual inclusion’ is commonly taken to refer to the adjustment of our social and educational practices to counteract prejudices that are connected to sex. The project of sexual inclusion can be used, for example, to advocate against the discrimination of the LGBTQIA+ (gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex, asexual, ally, and others) community or certain unconventional BDSM (bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism, and masochism) dynamics and activities. This essay, however, takes sexual inclusion as the project that (...) promotes the equal and largely indiscriminatory opportunity for each person to engage in meaningful and pleasurable nonmorally good sexual experiences, because, as I will argue, sex is part of what it means to live a flourishing and good human life. This essay focuses specifically on nonmorally good sex, how we experience it, and its fundamental role in promoting sexual inclusion – if one does not experience nonmorally good sex, one cannot feel or be considered as being sexually included. To have a better grasp on the project of sexual inclusion and what it is, I discuss the different mechanisms that can lead to sexual exclusion and how experiencing sexual exclusion can hinder our progress towards living a good and flourishing life. I conclude that due to its subjective nature, the experience of nonmorally good sex itself challenges and limits us in our pursuit of the advancement and achievement of sexual inclusion. Engaging in a sexual activity with another person due to the motivating reasons to provide that person with a nonmorally good sexual experience (with the goal of advancing their sexual inclusion), is not an input-output kind of process. If we are unable to guarantee nonmorally good sex for others, the result is that we cannot guarantee their sexual inclusion either. (shrink)

Women Activating Agency in Academia seeks to create and expand safe spaces for scholarly, professional and personal stories and assemblages of agency. It provides readers with the opportunity to connect with the strategies women are using to navigate academe and the core values, linked to trust, relationship, wellbeing and ethics of care, they live by. The collection offers the stories of women academics from around the globe and across disciplines and showcases their efforts to meaningfully listen and converse in order (...) to resist self-audit and diminished identities. Reflections come from a range of responsive, personal and aesthetic techniques, including writing groups, guided autobiography, auto-ethnography, collective activism and slow scholarship. Chapters engage with themes and ideas such as agency, neoliberalism, ontological security, androcentricity, identity and collegial support, which manifest in unique ways for female academics. The focus in this volume is what really matters to women in the academy, as they share their efforts to 'be' themselves in their work, to 'care for themselves and others' and to 'count what isn't counted'. It aims to prove how collaborative storytelling and discussion can empower female academics to preserve and achieve these ambitions. (shrink)

The Fair-Start Defense justifies affirmative action preferences as a response to harms caused by race- and sex-based discrimination. Rather than base a justification for preferences on the traditional appeal to self-esteem, I argue they are justified in virtue of the effects institutional discrimination has on the goals and aspirations of its victims. In particular, I argue that institutional discrimination puts women and blacks at an unfair competitive disadvantage by causing academic disidentification. Affirmative action is justified as a (...) means of negating this unfair disadvantage. (shrink)

The urgency of the issue in question lies in the need to improve anti-discrimination legislation in Ukraine. The article aims to summarize the current state of combating discrimination in sports. Research methods include analysis, generalization, and the formal-logical method. The article summarizes international acts that promote the prohibition of discrimination and the need to combat it. One of the main problems in world sport is racial discrimination, and there are three types of racism in sports. The (...) main disadvantage of laws that lead to imperfect prosecution mechanism is entirely criminal liability for discrimination, even though the law on preventing and combating discrimination also implies administrative and civil liability. The article analyzes some positive foreign experience in combating and counteracting in sports. It shows that the priority areas for combating and counteracting discrimination in sports in Ukraine should be: improving the legislation in terms of prosecution; establishing a special body responsible for combating and counteracting discrimination in sports; introducing educational tools in schools and among members of sports organizations that promote human rights, regardless of race, colour or other characteristics. Emphasis is placed on the fact that an effective mechanism of legal regulation together with preventive measures should guarantee the protection of the rights of both athletes and fans. The obtained results can serve as the basis of legislative proposals to improve the fight against discrimination in sports, which will ensure the protection of human rights. (shrink)

When widespread use of sex‐selective abortion and sex selection through assisted reproduction lead to severe harms to third parties and perpetuate discrimination, should these practices be banned? In this paper I focus on India and show why a common argument for a ban on sex selection fails even in these circumstances. I set aside a common objection to the argument, namely that women have a right to procreative autonomy that trumps the state's interest in protecting other parties from harm, (...) and argue against the ban on consequentialist grounds. I perform a pairwise comparative analysis of sex selection and its plausible alternatives and argue that that the ban fails to improve the state of affairs relative to a scenario without a ban. The ban makes the situation worse, especially for mothers and their daughters. India should therefore repeal its ban on sex selection. (shrink)

Based on a major research project funded by the European Commission,_ Populism, Media and Education_ studies how discriminatory stereotypes are built online with a particular focus on right-wing populism. Globalization and migration have led to a new era of populism and racism in Western countries, rekindling traditional forms of discrimination through innovative means. New media platforms are being seen by populist organizations as a method to promote hate speech and unprecedented forms of proselytism. Race, gender, disability and sexual orientation (...) are all being used to discriminate and young people are the preferred target for populist organizations and movements. This book examines how media education can help to deconstruct such hate speech and promote young people’s full participation in media-saturated societies. Drawing on rich examples from Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Italy, Slovenia, and the UK - countries characterized by different political and cultural contexts – _Populism, Media and Education_ addresses key questions about the meaning of new populism, the nature of e-engagement, and the role of education and citizenship in the digital century. With its international and interdisciplinary approach, this book is essential reading for academics and students in the areas of education, media studies, sociology, cultural studies, political sciences, discrimination and gender studies. (shrink)

This study examined the influence of sex and racial discrimination on academic alienation among Iranian university students. Two groups of 60 girls and 60 boys were sampled through multi-stage cluster sampling from among first-year Tabriz University students in Tabriz, Iran. All participants, between18 and 22, were asked to respond on an academic alienation questionnaire. The findings of a two-way ANOVA revealed that girls and Turkish speakers had higher levels of academic alienation compared to boys and Persian speakers. An investigation (...) of interactional effects indicated that Turkish girls demonstrated the highest levels of academic alienation, with no significant effects in the powerlessness dimension. Finally, the effects of the factors relevant to academic alienation were discussed. (shrink)

(1983). The evolving policy of equal curricular opportunity in England: A case study of the implementation of sex equality in physical education. British Journal of Educational Studies: Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 229-251.

In this paper I present and defend a highly demanding principle of justice in education that has not been seriously discussed thus far. According to the suggested approach, “all the way equality”, justice in education requires nothing short of equal educational outcome between all individual students. This means not merely between equally able children, or between children from different groups and classes, but rather between all children, regardless of social background, race, sex and ability. This approach may seem (...) implausible at first, due to the far-reaching implications it entails, primarily its requirement to deny better-off children their advantage for the sake of equality. However the paper argues that all-the-way-equality, in fact, does a better job realizing the goals of justice in education than alternative conceptions of justice. It is further argued that at least some of the principle’s most radical consequences, those that make it seem counterintuitive, can be mitigated by balancing all-the-way-equality with competing interests. (shrink)

In the current debate about same-sex marriage, the great majority of writers belong to one of two camps: either completely in favor of same-sex marriage or completely against it. No effort is typically made to treat different dimensions of the problem differently. My approach, however, is to distinguish between two dimensions of the problem—between the right to marry a person of the same sex on the one hand, and the right to obtain public recognition of such marriage, on the other (...) hand. It turns out, then, that the best solution to the problem of samesex marriage may actually fall between the opposing camps, between unqualified rejection and unqualified recognition of same-sex marriage. Same-sex marriage ceremonies ought to be lawful, hence tolerated, but same-sex marriage need not be recognized; the benefits and protections of the marriage license may be denied to same-sex couples without discriminating against them. If sound, the argument of this paper as a whole demonstrates that, in the matter of same-sex marriage, a liberal democratic society, by virtue of the scope and flexibility of its institutions, is capable of reconciling majority rule and tradition with the demands of justice. (shrink)