GRE Reading Comprehension
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Source: 1994
Defenders of special protective labor legislation for women often maintain that eliminating such laws would destroy the fruits of a century-long struggle for the protection of women workers. Even a brief examination of the historic practice of courts and employers would show that the fruit of such laws has been bitter: they are , in practice, more of a curse than a blessing.
Sex-defined protective laws have often been based on stereotypical assumptions concerning women's needs and abilities, and employers have frequently used them as legal excuses for discriminating against women.After the Second World War, for example, businesses and government sought to persuade women to vacate jobs in factories, thus making room in the labor force for returning veterans. The revival or passage of state laws limiting the daily or weekly work hours of women conveniently accomplished this. Employers had only to declare that overtime hours were a necessary condition of employment or promotion in their factory, and women could be quite legally fired,refused jobs, or kept at low wage levels, all in the name of "protecting" their health. By validating such laws when they are challenged by lawsuits, the courts have colluded over the years in establishing different, less advant-ageous employment terms for women than for men, thus reducing women's competitiveness on the job market. At the same time, even the most well-intentioned lawmakers, courts, and employers have often been blind to the real needs of women. The law makers and the courts continue to permit employers to offer employee health insurance plans that cover all known human medical disabilities except those relating to pregnancy and childbirth.
Finally, labor laws protecting only special groups are often ineffective at protecting the workers who are actually in the workplace. Some chemicals, for example, pose repro-ductive risks for women of child-bearing years; manufacturers using the chemicals comply with laws protecting women against these hazards by refusing to hire them.Thus the sex-defined legislation protects the hypothetical female worker, but has no effect whatever on the safety of any actual employee.The health risks to male employees in such industries cannot be negligible,since chemicals toxic enough to cause birth defects in fetuses or sterility in women are presumably harmful to the human metabolism. Protective laws aimed at changing production materials or techniques in order to reduce such hazards would benefit all employees without discriminating against any.
In sum, protective labor laws for women are discriminatory and do not meet their intended purpose. Legislators should recognize that women are in thework force to stay, and that their needs-good health care, a decent wage,and a safe workplace-are the needs of all workers, Laws that ignore these facts violate women's rights for equal protection in employment.
The author implies that which of the following is characteristic of many employee health insurance plans?
- A They cover all the common medical conditions affecting men, but only some of those affecting women.
- B They lack the special provisions for women workers that proposed special labor laws for women would provide.
- C They pay the medical costs associated with pregnancy and childbirth only for the spouses of male employees, not for female employees.
- D They meet minimum legal requirements, but do not adequately safeguard the health of either male or female employees.
- E They have recently been improved as a result of the passage of new labor laws, but continue to exclude coverage of certain uncommon medical conditions affecting women.