Category: business ethics

Why Pay Women Less?

On By southwerkIn business ethics
Why Pay Women Less?

The Equal Opportunity Employment Commission has filed a lawsuit against ten oil companies for paying women less than men for the same job. Take a moment and look at this quote with a link to the source – which I will follow with my own thoughts.

These Companies Are Paying Women Less Than Men, According To Lawsuit | ThinkProgress
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Why Pay Women Less?

The company, which has employed at least 37 clerks since 2010, has also been paying female clerks less than men over that time, according to the complaint. Yet the agency says both genders were doing “substantially equal work under similar working conditions.”

For example, a male clerk with one year of accountant experience and 11 years as a store manager with some bookkeeping experience was paid a starting wage of $17.74 an hour in 2010 and eventually paid $21 an hour, according to the complaint. Yet a woman hired at the same time as him who had 17 years of accounting experience made just $15.07 when she was hired and only ever got up to $16.93, more than a $3 per hour pay gap. Another woman with 10 years experience running her own business and five years bookkeeping experience was also hired at a lower starting wage and only made it to $17.91 an hour by 2013.

via These Companies Are Paying Women Less Than Men, According To Lawsuit | ThinkProgress.

Okay, why?

These companies undoubtedly use computers to calculate salaries and benefits and obviously paying women less than men is going to show up statistically and must be well known in the company. There are fields in which it is possible to claim that men “deserve” more than women, although I have serious doubts about those claims. But what is the field of endeavor here in which women are paid less – accounting. Are numbers subject to physical strength? Can the figures on a page be subject to testosterone influence? Can male posturing move an apostrophe in a large number? I think not.

So, if there is no performance based reason for paying women less, what is it? I have three theories: greed, hatred or custom. If it is greed, you pay women less because it is profitable, there’s money in it. And while that does make logical sense, I’m not really comfortable saying that is the reason. What about custom? The practice of paying women less is quite common and often done throughout entire industries. We can say with assurance that throughout American history women have been paid less (or not allowed to work at all). So, both custom and greed make sense. Greed provides motive and custom provides justification.

I don’t know if those are sufficient reasons. A couple of years ago, I was working on an article about the Fukushima Nuclear disaster. There is a Japanese web site that covers continuing developments and the owners are kind enough to translate a good part of it into English. They said that there had been a change in the birth rate between males and females in the area. I thought that was interesting and might be a good lead. So, I did an Internet search. I never did find out if the numbers had changed. I was swept into a world of Internet misogyny, the likes of which I had no idea existed. The first thousand search results were male oriented web sites explaining how men were oppressed by women, how stupid women were and how to manipulate women. I’m pleased to say that the search engines have changed and those web sites no longer come up on a neutral search. If you want to read that kind of thing, you’ll have to look for it more directly.

I have come to suspect that many males consciously and probably many unconsciously resent women in the workplace and a salary differential is only one aspect of that disdain. Obviously this is just my theory attempting to explain why paying women less is so common.

Business ethics like any discussion of morality and human decisions sometimes leaves you pondering the mysteries of the human heart. Why do we do the things we do, especially when they seem to make little sense.

The corporate format is a human creation that exercises enormous power but sometimes it seems as if our understanding of what is right and wrong has not risen to the same level as our organizational talents.

James Pilant

How Do They Get Caught?

On By southwerkIn business ethics
How Do They Get Caught?

One of the joys of teaching is how clever students can be and I have been and continue to be very fortunate in the students who have come to my classes. One day I was explaining how it is illegal to fire someone based on race or sex and a hand goes up. My student goes, “Professor Pilant, since we live in a fire at will nation, how would anyone ever get caught firing someone over sex or race when they could always say they fired them for something else?”

How do they get caught?
How do they get caught?

And I got to tell them the truth, businesses get caught because when they fire someone it is not unusual for them to tell them directly or put it in writing why they did so even when it is illegal. My class was bewildered by this. After all, aren’t these defendants often large corporations with their own lawyers? So once again I told them the truth, many managers fire without ever consulting with the legal department or in the case of small businesses without consulting with an attorney even if they have one on retainer. This didn’t help. They became even more bewildered.

So, I said this – “We live in a nation where businessmen are thought well of. They are given an automatic level of respect whether or not they deserve it. They appear on the covers of magazines. PR firms write endless text glorifying their lives and they are considered to be authorities on everything from education to government to foreign policy. I saw a few weeks ago where a community college’s future plans were made by a set of businessmen (referred to as community leaders) with the help of the President of the school and no one else, not a student, not a professor, not a public official, not an expert in the field of education, just businessmen. That’s how high that respect can go. And they believe it. And believing it they feel they understand the world in a way that others cannot. So, they do things without checking because they believe they already know what is right and correct.”

I would like to note that I ran the search “firing pregnant women” on Yahoo-search. The first search result said this subject falls into employment discrimination law and the second one listed the congressional act making firing women for being pregnant illegal. So, the story with its quote below is astonishing since even the thinnest internet search uncovers the correct answer.

That people who run companies especially small businesses deserve respect is in my mind, a foregone conclusion. It must be hard to do a lot of the tasks involved in creating and maintaining a business. But we need to remember the lesson of the ancient Greeks of the dangers of hubris, overwhelming pride. It is good to have confidence in what you are doing, except that according to the Greeks living an examined life also meant knowing when you’ve found your limits and going no further. Many a Greek story revolves around people destroying themselves because of their pride.

There are real limitations in the training and experience of those in the field of business. They are certainly valuable citizens but there are many kinds of knowledge, kinds of experience and valid ways of looking at the world and its problems that are outside the world of business.

James Pilant

 

Nonprofit Ordered To Pay $75,000 Over ‘No Pregnancy In The Workplace’ Policy | ThinkProgress

United Bible Fellowship Ministries, Inc., which provides housing and care to people with disabilities, will have to pay a former employee $75,000 for firing her after she became pregnant to settle a lawsuit brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

The organization has had a “no pregnancy in the workplace” policy in place that meant it fired anyone who became pregnant and refused to hire anyone applying for a position while pregnant. It admitted that the former employee, Sharmira Johnson, performed her job as a resource technician providing care to residents well and didn’t have any medical restrictions that would keep her from carrying out her duties. Yet it fired her, arguing it was justifiable in order to ensure her safety, that of her unborn baby, and the safety of its clients.

via Nonprofit Ordered To Pay $75,000 Over ‘No Pregnancy In The Workplace’ Policy | ThinkProgress.

Four Years of Weed?

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Four Years of Weed?

Ben Stein is opposed to making college free because “college is just a chance to get high.” (A small part of the reporting article is quoted with a link below the essay. jp) This is a kind of journalism, but only a kind. It was on  a news program and it’s designed not to inform, not to enlighten but to shock and, in this case, denigrate millions of American who go, have gone or will go to college. I assume this will be good for ratings but it doesn’t add much to the discussion of what should be done about rising tuition and student loan burdens.

I teach college classes. Most of my students work and many have families. Regular attendance in both my classes and at their jobs tend to suggest that they are not spending an inordinate amount of time using drugs. Among certain circles there is an amazing delight in denigrating young people today calling them entitled, talking about helicopter parenting, talking about how lazy they are, etc. etc. and on. There are differences between today’s students and those in the previous generations. I did some teaching in the distance past and those students (1993) were more questing and intellectually curious about the world than my current students but that’s pretty easy to chalk up to the current addiction to standardized testing. This generation is quite good at sucking up facts and giving them back to you. Their high school education pushed them in that direction. I can’t blame them for that kind of radical re-programming.

I have some familiarity with Ben Stein and I think he sincerely believes what he is saying. And what’s more, I think he enjoys saying it. He sees himself as a provocateur telling difficult truths to a “politically correct” society. But while what he says is shocking, that doesn’t mean that it has any validity and since taking verbal potshots at the current generation seems to be massive public sport in this country, I don’t see political correctness acting as a defense in any way.

It would have been nice and ethical business for there to have been an intelligent discussion of the serious issue of free college or even an intelligent discussion of college drug use. Be we didn’t get either one here.

In a society professing democratic values, the presentation of ideas in conflict is important. But here we have a news program catering to a particular demographic by denigrating and slandering an entire generation of Americans. This is not ethical.

James Pilant

i_224Addicting Info – Ben Stein Against Making College Free: Poor Kids Only Care About Getting High (VIDEO)

Stein ended his rant by saying that although discipline and education seem to be the only things (according to him) that stand in the way of poor people securing middle-class status, he doesn’t like the idea of education being free because college is mostly just “four years of smoking the neon-green chronic.”

Noting that the interview was taking a turn for the worst, Cavuto jumped in and said, “Look at the time here. Look at the time!” Stein completely missed the verbal cue, and added that for many kids, “college is just a chance to get high! Why are we going to subsidize it?”

via Addicting Info – Ben Stein Against Making College Free: Poor Kids Only Care About Getting High (VIDEO).

Slate is Tedious

On By southwerkIn business ethics
Slate is Tedious
Slate is Tedious
Slate is Tedious

Today, I just gave up. I looked at the endless columns and Jackson Pollack arrangement of files, and said “Screw it, I’ll just read something else.”

That was my morning visit to the web site for Slate. I refer to it as a web site but that is overt praise for it. A proper nomenclature for the Internet would have some term for blindingly inaccessible sites, some short hand phrase that means “We hate you. Go away.”

Slate has some of the best writing on the Internet. Rebecca Schuman is magnificent. Few writers have ever had such a grasp of the contradictions and weirdness of the academic world. Dahlia Lithwick knows the law and can write about it with power and intelligence. Amanda Marcotte and her take on women’s issues is provocative and fun. And so on. But they are in different spots all over the web site, often multiple times.

Slate is a checkerboard designed by a madman, a psychopath with a hatred for good writing and humanity in general. The squares are colorful and, I’m sure, eminently satisfying for a four year old. As you go down the page, the squares change in order and size and importance and your eye tires of looking from side to side, up and down, and diagonally trying to make sense of this rubric’s cube’s disorder.

Before I read Slate each morning, I read the Guardian and Salon. Salon is my favorite. The writing isn’t better but going down the single column of offerings I see everything I want and pick out what I find important. But the Guardian is gold. It features a very high level of complexity and a wide variety of topics. Yet, they are presented in an intelligent, compelling format which is a joy to navigate. If I were one of the exalted royalty publishing at Slate, I would choose something like that.

But I have faith that they will continue on their present course and that it will only change with the people running the magazine are changed. That site cost a lot of money to set up and they’re not going to “waste it,” although they already have.

Will I read Slate tomorrow?

Yes. Rebecca, Dahlia and Amanda’s writing is calling for me and I will not resist the pull. And I have discovered that if I drink an extra cup of coffee, something iced and sweet, it improves my mood enough to get through the site. So, tomorrow, I go with full knowledge, once more, to the abyss.

James Pilant

 

The Teacher and Student Gap

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Teaching
The Teacher and Student Gap in Film Understanding

One day, I was teaching about a film, “It Happened One Night.” I was trying to explain the apparently ridiculous custom of showing people driving against a background screen. It looks tacky and breaks your acceptance of the film. It’s the problem with sound. I’ve seen silent films where they took film of people driving in cars and interacting in cars. But sound equipment is bulky. What’s more, the background noise of the automobile and the surroundings play havoc with the recording. So, we have to have a controlled environment. Modern film has access to much more capable equipment and that’s one of the reasons my students prefer to avoid the classic black and whites.

026I suppose one of the hardest things about teaching with film is the enormous disparity in understanding between teacher and student. They don’t get jokes, miss symbolism, never seem to look at the background and, worse of all, have trouble staying interested for more than twenty minutes. Their hands drift inexorably toward their electronic devices to check text and e-mail, an electronic reality more important to them than the Joseph Campbell style myths conveyed by film.

The way they talk, touch, perceive love and honor, choose their life goals and what they choose to believe in their version of reality are all shaped and shaped dramatically by these brief hours of concentrated talent. Sometimes they seem to get it and often not. I shouldn’t blame them too much. It has only been in the last few years that I began looking at film in terms of ethics, business ethics in particular. And worse, the films that have been important influences in my own life didn’t become apparent to me until I reflected long and hard while watching films I’d seen in my youth.

I wonder what they think about themselves from what they saw growing up. There were scant few special effects in my time and now they’re present in most films sometimes dominating them to the exclusion of all other factors. Could it be that lives seem humdrum and banal compared to an episode of Transformers? And because special effects take up so much time, do they live lives where conversation and relationships are de-emphasized just as in the films?
I know that for a good number I am planting the seeds of what someday will be a strong knowledge and appreciation of film culture and its significance in our lives. Future success is the rough equivalent of dry bread for dinner. You know it’s probably good for you but you’d rather not eat it.

James Pilant

Women Play Computer Games

On By southwerkIn business ethics
Women Play Computer Games

In the article below, it is revealed that Minecraft will soon have a female protagonist. Instead of always having to play a male, a player can choose either sex.

Apparently the video game world just realized that there are women who play video games. So, let’s see if I have the chain of male cluelessness down – males were surprised to learn that women could talk, write, speak in public, choose their own husbands, control their own property, vote, drive cars, work, operate machinery, play sports, etc. What’s next?

Women Play Video Games
Women Play Video Games

Don’t worry. I’m sure there is a great number of things people in various industries are confident that women don’t, can’t or won’t do. I remember reading a magazine from back in the fifties. They were interviewing this guy who was a chef and they asked him if it bothered him to do what was traditionally women’s work. He explained that he wasn’t a cook, he was a chef and his job was tough and no woman could do what he did.

For many males, maybe all males, being identified however distantly with the female other is frightening and demeaning. Zones of apparent all male participation are comforting if wickedly unfair and ridiculous.

If we are going to practice business ethics, women are not the other – women are part of we, we the decisionmakers, the players, the consumers, etc. etc.

It’s obvious from reading about this mini-revolution in gaming of having female video game characters, that the designers were men who felt that the players in the games they made were also men.

How many times do we in the business of educating people have to see this pattern before realize that it might be better and easier to work on how our students construct a comfortable narrative based on yesterday’s gender identities? If we teach them that males and females are opposites but different perspectives on humanity, we might make better professionals – and better human beings as well.

James Pilant

Minecraft, Temple Run: Video game characters don’t have to default to male.

Fans of Minecraft—especially girls—have long felt frustrated that the only default character available in the popular building game is a man. Now, the game’s programmers have announced that players will get a lady option. The Washington Post describes this new character, Alex, as “a seemingly female character with thinner arms, pinker lips, and a swoop of hair around her neck,” in contrast to default character Steve, “a bulky man with short, dark hair and a 5 o’clock shadow.” Owen Hill of Mojang, the game studio that created Minecraft, explains that this move will better “represent the diversity of our playerbase.”

via Minecraft, Temple Run: Video game characters don’t have to default to male..

Religion Is A Weapon

On By southwerkIn business ethics
Religion Is A Weapon
Religion is a weapon
Religion is a weapon

Below my comments is a brief piece of an article in which a minister explains from the pulpit (to be succinct)”This is a man’s world.” The current political reality is that it is still very much in many ways a man’s world, but this minister isn’t arguing political reality, he’s saying that to be “right with God,” a church must enshrine male leadership.

The basic conflict here is simple. If women are human beings with intelligence and judgment and in Christianity, a soul, doesn’t it follow that they should have equal rights and full participation in society? If not, what are they? – something not quite finished or whole? The struggle here is between these two kinds of thought. In my experience, there is only one answer, women are equal to men.

Our minister here is using Christianity as a cover for his beliefs about women and this is historically common, the last defense against civil rights for blacks was religion. It was a line of defense against freeing the slaves. It was used to defend denying women the right to vote, and now this “spokesman” for the Almighty finds justification once again to put someone in their place, in this case half the world’s population.

It is written –

King James Bible
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

I can’t help but think that this sword is too often picked up not in the name of Christianity but to justify personal inclination. When used in this way, religion is a weapon. But I do not understand how a believer in a all-wise, all knowing Deity can believe that women are a lesser vessel. Yes, I’m sure you can find some pertinent verses but we as a society have long ago given up witch burning, selling our daughters as bond slaves, killing disobedient children and executing rape victims for not making enough noise during the assault. (We also charge interest on things – strictly forbidden!) Take a look:

New International Version
He lends at interest and takes a profit. Will such a man live? He will not! Because he has done all these detestable things, he is to be put to death; his blood will be on his own head.

I’m sure the banking industry would have a difficult time following that command.

So, we as a society have from time to time rewritten our laws and customs to be out of accordance with a literal interpretation of the bible but perhaps very much in line with biblical intent. So, the bible’s use as shield for misogyny is another belief that we will very likely modify as a society as attitudes change.

I have written and still believe that women’s changing status is the most important business ethics issue of this decade. It is an ongoing struggle and I read virtually every single day of women suffering firing, insult and abuse in the work place. While this minister is something of an obvious buffoon, many of his ilk are far more skilled communicators and they have considerable influence. Generally, they don’t speak of women as being inferior so much as needing protection. Thus, discrimination is justified because women need help in a dangerous world and often they need this help in making good judgments about abortion, contraception, etc.

Business is a part of our culture and like other elements is influenced by religion. And that is why I call attention to the use of relion as a weapon against women. But however much I find this use distressing I still find comfort, wisdom and moral direction in the book. I may be accused of hypocrisy in quoting the book in service to my own beliefs while others using quotes face my scorn but this comes from reading the bible as an evolving document not as a word for word set of commands. In this belief I am very much in line with what my denomination believes.

I believe the day will come when society finds it ridiculous that middle aged men (like the minister described below) believed they could make better decisions for women than the women themselves.

James Pilant

Pastor Fails Hard In His Demonstration Of Why Male Leadership Is So Superior

“Don’t you be ashamed you go to a church with male leadership,” Lytells says in the clip of his sermon, uploaded to YouTube by ‘Bad Preachers’. “Every church that’s right with God oughta have a sign: ‘Male Leadership.’ Because that’s the only kind of leadership, both from Adam all the way to the last part of the Bible. It’s all been male. This is a man’s world!”

via Pastor Fails Hard In His Demonstration Of Why Male Leadership Is So Superior.

The Ethics Sage Discusses the Moral Issues in the Film, Insurgent.

On By southwerkIn business ethics
The Ethics Sage Discusses the Moral Issues in the Film, Insurgent.

(Steven Mintz, the Ethics Sage give his usual intelligent analysis to a film. Please go to his web site and read the whole entry. jp)

Below is a brief excerpt from this work followed by my own comments.

The Ethics of Insurgent of the Divergent Series – Ethics Sage

What makes “Insurgent” a modern play on morality is that Tris encounters a wide variety of moral issues that can best be viewed through the lens of the film itself. Here are some quotes:  

“That might be your truth; it’s not necessarily mine” – a textbook summary of moral relativism.

“I’m just one person; I’m not worth it” – spoken when Tris considers submitting to death rather than seeing others suffer, reflecting a utilitarian understanding that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, something I recently blogged about.

 “Dark times call for dark measures, but I am serving the greater good” – or, in other words, “the ends justify the means.” We can relate this to the current conflict (war?) with ISIS and ISIL. That is, fighting a war may be wrong but its ends of “degrading” and “destroying” an evil enemy make it justified from a moral point of view.

“May the truth set you free.” Honesty is the best policy and leads to a clear conscience.

via The Ethics of Insurgent of the Divergent Series – Ethics Sage. (End of excerpt)

Films are a vital tool in teaching business ethics.

frontWhile I don’t use any of the Divergent Series in my classes, I’m confident they are useful. Why? Because most motion pictures save for those displaying our modern penchant for special effects over character development almost always deal with moral issues. Some films are more useful than others. For instance, The Wolf of Wall Street glorifies the antics of a criminal. On the other hand, there are films like Desk Set, The Apartment, and Sabrina that illustrate business and class issues, and, not incidentally are some of the greatest films of all time.

Today in class, we used My Life in Ruins to teach Business Ethics. Nia Vardalos may very well have made “The Gone With the Wind” of business ethics films. The film is so crowded with business ethics problems that my students sometimes have trouble writing them down as the film proceeds. That the film is also well-done and funny are added benefits. (Education does not always have to be painful.)

One of the interesting things about using films in class is that those who use documentaries tend to use the same ones (based on my observations and reading other people’s syllabi), while those who use movies vary widely. One of my colleagues sent me her syllabus in which all of her films are very recent whereas my films can go back to the silents (Metropolis). Now, my students give me the impression that making them watch a silent film is roughly equivalent to slowly boiling them in oil. So, that particular one is an optional extra-credit assignment.

James Pilant

 

The Most Disturbing Paragraph of the Week

On By southwerkIn business ethics
The Most Disturbing Paragraph of the Week
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The Most Disturbing Paragraph of the Week

Jesus would hate you all — and you didn’t build that: The truth about the ultra-rich and their New York Times apologists – Salon.com

IRS data compiled by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saenz and their colleagues at the top incomes database shows how stark America’s shift from a broad-based prosperity model has been. From 1947 to 1973, the average incomes of the bottom 90 percent increased 99.2 percent, compared to 88.9 percent for the top 10 percent, and a mere 7.4 percent for the top 0.1 percent.  But from 1973 to 2008, the average incomes of the bottom 90 percent fell 6.1 percent, while the average incomes of the top 10 percent continued rising by another 70.8 percent, and average incomes of the top 0.1 percent skyrocketed an astronomical 706.4 percent.

via Jesus would hate you all — and you didn’t build that: The truth about the ultra-rich and their New York Times apologists – Salon.com.

My Comments on this –

I’m told from time to time that the slow destruction of the middle class and the de-professionalization of faculty at colleges and universities are the result of globalization. This globalization process is often described like a natural phenomenon like an earthquake or a tidal wave.

But the economic changes over the last fifty years are not the result of “natural” market forces. First and foremost, the market is an artificial construct. It seems to me that the idea of a complex structure with buying, selling, currency, the problems of shipping and safety, and a vast system of law can hardly be described as a natural process in the manner of lions hunting wildebeests. Second, this is policy – cold, deliberate policy. I can list them beginning with the Reagan tax cuts that eliminated the upper brackets. I would probably end with “Citizens United,” a decision that makes sense only through the prism of the Wall Street Journal. The idea that money is a form of speech is ridiculous but worse is the idea directly expressed in the decision that the resulting enormous rise of money in politics would not give the appearance of corruption.

Let’s have a look at the “appearance of corruption.” How about this, or this (Look at the chart of spending on the last election cycles!), or this, or this, or this? How many do you want? Maybe, just maybe, the Supreme Court got it wrong? Maybe incredible sums of money and the ubiquity of the Koch brothers commercials give the appearance that you can buy any election in the United States any time you want if you’re willing to shell out enough money?

Where’s the business ethics here? It’s very simple. You build a better product. You compete in the marketplace and sell your better product. Capitalism in action! But wait, why do that when you can give several million dollars to Congress or better yet a much cheaper State or local government and be subsidized? Building a better product is hard, purchasing influence is easy. Thus the NFL pays no taxes, the oil industry in spite of being immensely profitable gets government subsidies, factory farms produce food paid for in advance by the federal government. None of these is a better product. Can there be any doubt that multiple leagues would produce more and better sports? Does it seem likely to you that oil companies would founder if left to suffer multi-billion dollar profits without government subsidy? And would farming disappear without government aid?

Where’s is innovation in all this? Is football improving? Does the oil industry compete by making a better product or is it committed to an increasingly obsolete business model? How come we subsidize certain agriculural products but don’t subsidize more healthy products?

We can adopt policies which favor a strong, vibrant middle class. We don’t have to give in to every industry demand even if it is backed by enormous political contributions. Sometimes we may fell and justly that this country is being sold out from under us. We live in society becoming more and more an oligarchy of corporate power and the wealthy. But this is not an inevitable process. Other nations have moved in this direction and yet have the soul democracy once again. The American people are a great and good people. I believe in time that a great people will realize that unrestrained greed is still one of the deadly sins to be shunned like the others.

James Pilant

 

Five Business Ethics Films!! 3/10/2015

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Here is a list of films with business ethics issues. I use these in class. Some are documentaries and some are more conventional movies.

Scandalous women of the 19th century

(Write me a minimum of five sentences using the format in the syallabus to explain whether or not the changes these women inspired in the legal status of women have any relevance in your life today. 8 points extra credit.)

Love Affair

The Charles Boyer character in the film can spend his life with the woman he loves in a state of financial insecurity or marry a beautiful wealthy woman and live a life of indulgence and pleasure seeking. The film is from an earlier era and to them the choice was obvious. What would you choose and why? Is your choice simple and how time do you spend weighing the economic advantages? Could you be happy without financial security?

Three Godfathers

The three men depicted here are bank robbers. Is the film reasonable – does it make sense in the light of our current beliefs? If you were one of the three men, would you have been willing to do what they did? Are there more important things in life than wealth and ease? Could you name some?

Jane Eyre

Jane is a plain girl, with no money, no connection to the aristocratic classes and in fact, very little connection to even the gentile middle class. Rochester can marry a beautiful woman of impeccable breeding who will bring money and influence to the marriage. Is this just some silly Gothic novel designed to alleviate the pain of plain women or is it something of an eternal observation about the fulfilled life as opposed to fulfilling the expectations of society?

Persuasion

According to the film, does the heroine cravenly seek money and position? In a nation heavily influenced by neoliberalism, aren’t we supposed to use the free market to maximize our gains – why or why not? Isn’t matrimony just another form of financial transaction? Aren’t men and women objects of investment and return?