Restructuring the Labor Market to Democratize the Public Forum

Abstract

Restructuring the Labor Market to Democratize the Public Forum makes the provocative argument that the identities we construct in the labor market prevent us from creating a democratic public forum. The labor market, where we spend most of our time as adults, wields tremendous influence over our identities, yet its influence is deeply undemocratic. Employers promote hierarchy and ideological conformity through a variety of mechanisms, including sex-based pay scales and stereotypes, rather than promoting the equality and ideological diversity that are crucial to a democratic public forum. Employees inevitably internalize the hierarchies and ideologies to which they are exposed in the labor market, and reproduce them in the public forum – thereby destroying the possibility of democratic debate. When we inhabit rigid hierarchies and embrace a narrow set of ideologies over long periods of time in the labor market, we become ill-equipped to interact as equals and express unique ideologies in the public forum. If we want to create a truly democratic public forum, we need to create a labor market that is either more democratic or less relevant to identity construction. The labor market could be “democratized” by requiring employers to flatten existing hierarchies and involve employees in workplace governance; it could alternatively be rendered less relevant to identity construction by diminishing the number of hours we spend at work.

Keywords: democracy, equality, diversity, employment, sex discrimination