MoDOT and Quotas

This Post-Dispatch article describes how well Gateway Constructors is meeting quotas for hiring women and minorities. The percentage of minorities hired to work on Highway 40 is above the target; the number of women hired is a little low.

What if there aren’t that many women who want to work on Highway 40? It’s obviously harder to find them — as we can see, the contractor didn’t meet the target. MoDOT is telling its contractors to hunt high and low to hire a certain number of women, while men who are eager to work are passed over. The search for women entails some cost, so the quota is basically a tax on everyone else to benefit a few women who work in construction.

It’s interesting that the public libraries aren’t pressed to hire more female librarians, nor are public schools measured by the percentage of their teachers who are women. For some reason, the state deems it necessary to encourage women who work on highways but not women who do other kinds of public work.