Question: Is It Time to End Affirmative Action for Women? Yes: Women Don't Need Extra Help

Larson, Elizabeth, Insight on the News

You've come a long way, baby! In just a few decades, we have seen women stride into the workplace in record numbers, taking their place alongside men as construction workers and computer analysts, physicians

I 1- and politicians. And, with an initiative slated for the California ballot in 1996 that would end granting preferential treatment to anyone on the basis of sex (see Insight, Feb. 20), the end is in sight for what may be, ironically, the last universal barrier to women's advancement - affirmative action.

The California Civil Rights Initiative, or CCRI - which proposes that "Neither the State of California nor any of its political subdivisions or agents shall use race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin as a criterion for either discriminating against, or granting preferential treatment to, any individual or group" - has begun a fight that will quickly assume a central role on the national stage. This battle promises to upset all our assumptions about affirmative action as a well-intentioned idea gone astray in a minefield of quotas and diatribes against heterosexual white males.

Supporters of CCRI claim the initiative would return government policy to the original intent of the civil-rights movement: judging people by the content of their character - or the facts on their resume - rather than by the color of their skin or their gender. They criticize the architects of affirmative action with shifting their focus from eradication of bias to ensuring equality of outcome. CCRI's opponents say passage of the measure would strip women and minorities of their major form of protection against prejudice in a …

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Publication information: Article title: Question: Is It Time to End Affirmative Action for Women? Yes: Women Don't Need Extra Help. Contributors: Larson, Elizabeth - Author. Magazine title: Insight on the News. Volume: 11. Issue: 16 Publication date: April 24, 1995. Page number: 18+. © 1999 News World Communications, Inc. COPYRIGHT 1995 Gale Group.

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