Sex Discrimination, Normativity, and Begging the Causal Question

Most leading philosophical accounts of discrimination theorize discrimination as a causal notion: roughly, an action discriminates on the basis of X (e.g., race, sex) if X causes (in the right way) the adverse outcome. This article explores the prospects for this causal account. Focusing my attention on the case of sex discrimination, I argue that struggles to settle the causal question regress to question-begging. This argument calls into question not just whether the causal account can handle sophisticated cases, which have recently been conceived of (by some) as discriminatory on the basis of sex, but even classic cases of sex discrimination. The negative argument in turn brings to light an alternative normative-causal approach to discrimination, which I sketch and suggest is promising indeed.