This opinion piece is from an individual FIST member and does not necessarily represent the views of the organization as a whole. However, FIST is on record in support of affirmative action.
The Supreme Court decision this past June in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard, finding race based affirmative action in college admissions an unconstitutional violation of equal protection https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf, not only struck a blow to Black people trying to break free from centuries of oppression and racist policies. It is also an impediment to women’s advancement as a sex in our own struggle against male supremacy.
Race blindness, like sex blindness, is an exceedingly bad idea when discrimination and/ or the institutionalized remnants of past discrimination still exist. Discriminatory intent is hard to prove but if all the staff at the local car repair shop is all white and male, chances are that sexism and racism played a determinate role. And race or sex conscious remedies are necessary.
Like in the case of abortion rights, affirmative action wasn’t gotten rid of all at once but was slowly eroded by the courts until the recent death blow was struck. The Bakke decision in 1978 marked the beginnings of this downward spiral. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/regents_of_the_university_of_california_v_bakke_(1978)
Though most women now work in the paid labor market and women have broken into certain professions, like law and medicine, previously mostly barred to them, the workforce remains highly sex segregated. There are still “men’s jobs” and “women’s jobs” even if advertisements that spelled this out have been banned for decades under civil rights laws. Women, though highly educated, are still relegated to lower paid, lower status positions, including even within the same field or profession. Women lawyers, for example, are concentrated in the non-profit world or work for the government (with the few men there disproportionately found in top management) and are rarely owners or partners of successful private law firms. Moreover, fields where most women work are underpaid and undervalued, despite the level of skill and education required or the importance of the work to society. Nursing and teaching come to mind.
Women of all colors benefited from affirmative action especially when it was more robust in the early years, i.e., at a time when it included quotas and/or goals and timetables. For example, women broke into the trades in the 1970’s, the first time since the government implemented its own affirmative action program bringing women into the war industry during World War II. For a fascinating documentary of this period, I recommend “the Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter.” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081053/
So, in the 1970’s and into the 1980’s women worked as car mechanics, carpenters, gardeners, plumbers, electricians, engineers, and construction workers. However, by the 1980’s, women were forced out of the trades, not because they weren’t interested in the work or too weak or lacking in the skills needed to do the job well, but due to the hostility of male co-workers and managers who engaged in severe sexual harassment and violence against the female newcomers. See https://socialchangenyu.com/review/toward-gender-equality-affirmative-action-comparable-worth-and-the-womens-movement/
Affirmative action’s impact on women’s status in the workplace was limited because it wasn’t strong enough. The number of women brought into male fields was small and the women were left isolated and far more vulnerable to harassment. If women had been recruited in large numbers or ideas such as all-women teams implemented, women would likely have stayed.
Affirmative action is a vital measure for achieving equality for both people of color and women of all colors. We need to create a movement strong enough to bring it back.