368
PARTISAN REVIEW
American public to make its future uncertain indeed. In the case of
women, hysterical protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, it has
worked better than its wildest supporters would have dared to hope. Some
undetermined combination of affirmative action, changing popular atti–
tudes, the impact of the global economy, and the myriad consequences of
the sexual revolution has effectively catapulted women from wages that
averaged less than two-thirds of those of their male counterparts to equal
pay for equal work for entry-level workers. Yet, however puzzling at first
glance, public sympathy for continued efforts to improve the position of
women, or to level the remaining barriers to their success, has apparently
survived the widespread impatience with affirmative action for minorities.
Now this is genuinely puzzling if not an outright paradox. For although
many black Americans, who are those we are most clearly talking about
when we talk of minorities, have done exceptionally well indeed, many
have not and, indeed, may well have done worse in alarming ways that bode
ill for the future prospects of the group as a whole. And the reasons for
which so many have floundered have much less to do with "race," than
with class, social environment, economic opportunity, and cultural tradi–
tions-all of which should be subject to modification, although by what
means remains as problematic as ever. To be blunt, the most salient-and
arguably intractable-causes of black disadvantage result not from nature
but from society, culture, and history. So, however woefully affirmative
action has failed, one may reasonably argue that it failed because it was the
wrong policy, not because the problems cannot be affected by any policy.
In the case of women, in contrast, affirmative action has produced such
impressive results as plausibly to have outlived its usefulness. This success
does not mean that women have, in every respect, attained equality with
men, since visibly most women have not. What it does mean is that the
residual factors that help to explain such persisting disadvantage as women
actually suffer may be virtually immune to change through social policies
and programs since they derive primarily from nature-or such a deeply
ingrained cultural psychology as to be virtually indistinguishable from it.
Our public feminist discourse resolutely resists this conclusion, which it dis–
misses as an acknowledgment that women may never hope to equal men.
The evidence nonetheless conclusively demonstrates that, in most arenas, any
woman may assuredly equal her male peers and that, in the few in which
equality between women and men seems highly improbable, specific forms
of physical strength constitute the main requirements. (Here, I am inten–
tionally leaving aside the question of the highest levels of mathematical
brilliance since, although the evidence confirms a persisting sexual
difference, the numbers are so small and the causes for the difference so con–
troversial as to make discussion inconclusive and speculation presumptuous.)
