07 Sep Discrimination and the Harvard Computers
Personally, I feel discriminated against when a person, without knowing me, draws conclusions about my actions. It’s very simple, he looks at me (from head to toe) and assumes that I have a certain attitude, some thought or that the quality of my work is doubtful. Probably you, dear reader, also have your own experience with discrimination and it will be as varied as human beings exist.
Since economics is a social science, we are also interested in issues of discrimination, since they affect people’s well-being in many ways. However, it is necessary to have a uniform criterion of discrimination. It would be very difficult to analyze a social phenomenon considering all the opinions and feelings about discrimination. What are the criteria of discrimination in economics? One of them, perhaps the most used, is the one that associates the productivity of a worker with his salary. Let’s see how this works.
At the beginning of the last century at the Harvard Observatory and under the command of Edward C. Pickering, a group of women called (colloquially) the “Harvard Computers” performed enormous and complex mathematical calculations in the field of astronomy, in order to to put together a catalog of stars. There is no doubt that the contribution of this group of women was spectacular, however, now I want to focus on a fragment of the “Book of Astronomy” that refers to these women:
“Although many of the Harvard computers had knowledge of astronomy, they could not access academic positions because they were women. They were paid as an unskilled worker.”
That’s right, they were paid as an unskilled worker. Isn’t that an excellent example of economic discrimination? If you analyze a solved mathematical problem, you don’t really ask if it was done by a man or a woman, therein lies the beauty of mathematics and statistics, the results are there and you will know how to interpret them. However, in the case of the “Harvard computers” the payment they received did not depend only on the quality of their work, but also on their status as a woman. A real discrimination from an economic perspective. Or not?
If the issues in economics were so simple to solve, it would only be enough to study a book at the university, the one that contains all the answers. But it doesn’t work like that. There will be a group of economists who will say: “The market works well and the agents are rational, therefore, there must be an explanation why the Harvard computers received a lower salary.” Another group will say: “the work done by Harvard computers was exactly the same as that of men, therefore, they should earn the same.” A third group will say: “the well-being of society is above individual well-being, therefore, it is the State that must decide how much Harvard computers and their boss, Mr. Pickering, earn.” And so, there are as many opinions as currents of thought.
Was the work of the Harvard computers exactly the same as what a man could have done? Imagine for a moment that yes, in fact, let’s assume that the job was better than what a group of men would have done. Who should control and supervise this situation? The State? A government bureaucrat? A representative of civil society? A regulatory agency against discrimination? The police? The media? ?, the universities?, the neighborhood council? So, in economics, it is not only necessary to investigate the origin of the problem, is the work of some people exactly the same as others? You also need to be very careful with solutions. Lest the remedy be worse than the disease. I invite you to reflect on this: if there is discrimination, then who should control it? How should this control be exercised? These two questions seem harmless, but they are capable of creating unmanageable institutional monsters.
To do? If Harvard computers were discriminated against and an institutional monster is not wanted, how do we solve the problem? There are several paths, I invite you to browse a bit on Google. However, like many problems in economics, all of these paths have their good and bad points.
We may not be able to solve all the world’s problems, but we can follow the recommendation made by Adam Smith (the one with the invisible hand), a little empathy with others will help us to have better societies. If you feel that you discriminate financially against a person, put yourself in their place and reflect on how you would like to be treated.
S. Mauricio Medinaceli Monrroy
La Paz, 1 de septiembre de 2022
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