Reading up on employment sex discrimination today, I ran across
a fascinating case. A group of women sued their employer because
under the employer’s retirement plan, women who opted for the
annuity option received a smaller monthly pension check than men
who did the same. In an annuity contract, individuals generally
pay an insurance company a lump sum of money in exchange for a
guaranteed monthly stipend for the remainder of their lives. To
determine how much the monthly payment will be, the insurance
company relies upon information about how long individuals
usually live. Because women live longer than men, insurers
provide lower monthly stipends for women than men even when the
two pay the same lump sum amount.  The question the court
resolved was whether an employer committed sex discrimination by
offering sex-sensitive annuity options (answer: yes). For me, I
am interested in the way that this problem illuminates moral
debates about equality. As any dedicated philosophical
egalitarian knows, the foundat