is it, or is it not 2006?

I learned something interesting in torts class yesterday. In personal injury claims for serious (or lethal) injuries, the court determines the future earning capacity of the victim (had they not been injured). There is a discretionary category called "contingencies" in which a percentage of the damages award is subtracted to account for incidents that may have affected the victim's future earnings (for some reason, contingencies are always detrimental to the victim).

One "contingency" is the time taken out of a woman's career for child-bearing (and presumeably, child-raising for a few years). It doesn't matter if the injured woman is/was a lifelong child-hater, nay, it doesn't matter if the woman is/was INCAPABLE of having children, the court expects that she would have taken time out of her career to have kids and subtracts a percentage of the future earning capacity to account for it.

That pisses me off. While most people probably dismiss this inequality as a minor issue I find it extremely distasteful. Imagine that a there is a hypothetical woman. She is a 25 year old med student who has always firmly held that she did not want children. Now assume that there is an equivalent hypothetical man. He is also a 25 year old med student but he has always wanted children. If these two hypothetical individuals were both seriously injured, when it comes time to awarding damages the woman's future career is worth less. Furthermore, the court assumes that this woman's desire to remain childless is puerile--something she'd have grown out of once her biological clock started ticking.

Like I said, it pisses me off.