Equal opportunity in the workplace is thought to be the direct legacy of the civil rights and feminist movements and the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yet, as Frank Dobbin demonstrates, corporate personnel experts--not Congress or the courts--were the ones who determined what equal opportunity meant in practice, designing changes in how employers hire, promote, and fire workers, and ultimately defining what discrimination is, and is not, in the American imagination. Dobbin shows how Congress and the courts merely endorsed programs devised by corporate personnel. He traces how the first measures were adopted by military contractors worried that the Kennedy administration would cancel their contracts if they didn't take "affirmative action" to end discrimination. These measures built on existing personnel programs, many designed to prevent bias against unionists. Dobbin follows the changes in the law as personnel experts invented one wave after another of equal opportunity programs. He examines how corporate personnel formalized hiring and promotion practices in the 1970s to eradicate bias by managers; how in the 1980s they answered Ronald Reagan's threat to end affirmative action by recasting their efforts as diversity-management programs; and how the growing presence of women in the newly named human resources profession has contributed to a focus on sexual harassment and work/life issues. Inventing Equal Opportunity reveals how the personnel profession devised--and ultimately transformed--our understanding of discrimination.

Covering the issues of race, gender and disability, this practical guide to equal opportunities meets the requirements of all CACHE, BTEC and City and Guilds courses.

Against Equality of Opportunity deals with the ways in which opportunities - education, jobs and other things which affect how people get on in life - are distributed. Take jobs: should the best person always get the job? Or should everyone be given an equal 'life chance'? Or can we somehow combine these two ideas, saying that the best person should always get the job, but that everyone should have an equal chance to become the best? These seem to be the standard views, but this book argues that they are all flawed. We need to understand meritocracy for what it is - a technical rather than a moral ideal; and we need to accept that equality just isn't something we should be striving for at all in this area. We also need to rethink our approach to the related issue of discrimination. We tend to assume discrimination is wrong because it violates either meritocracy or equality, when in fact it is wrong for quite different reasons. In all these areas, then, Cavanagh aims to loosen the grip of established ways of thinking, in order that other ideas might find room to breathe. This is particularly important in the case of meritocracy, which after the recent conversion of the centre-left now dominates the debate more than ever. This book will be of interest to students and teachers of political philosophy, but ultimately it is aimed at anyone who cares about the fundamental values that lie behind the way society is organized. Though the argument is rigorous, it does not require a professional philosophical training to follow it.

This book offers original and innovative contributions to the debate about equality of opportunity. The first part sets out a theory of equality of opportunity that presents equal opportunities as a normative device for the regulation of competition for scarce resources. The second part shifts the focus to the consideration of the practical application by courts or legislatures or public policy makers of policies for addressing racial, class or gender injustices. The author examines standardized tests, affirmative action, workfare, universal health-care, comparable worth, and the economic consequences of divorce.

This is a seminal time for Equal Opportunities and Diversity (EO&D) in the UK: the three existing Equality Commissions have been amalgamated into the Commission for Equality and Human Rights and a new Single Equality Act was published in 2010. The concepts of EO&D now incorporate gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, religion and belief and age inequalities. For the future, the problems of separate and relative deprivation, and conflicting experiences and interests, must be tackled, both between and within different categories of disadvantage. These different, complex and sometimes contradictory strands in legislation, policy and practice need to be analysed and understood in order to facilitate genuine social change. This book challenges the official discourse that shapes the debates on EO&D at national, regional and European level. The book will be a key text for students and researchers of EO&D in criminology, social policy, sociology, women's studies, gender studies, public administration, business studies, economics and management and industrial relations, at both undergraduate and postgraduate courses. It will also be of interest to EO&D professionals and policy makers in public and private sector organisations.

John Roemer points out that there are two views of equality of opportunity that are widely held today. The first, which he calls the nondiscrimination principle, states that in the competition for positions in society, individuals should be judged only on attributes relevant to the performance of the duties of the position in question. Attributes such as race or sex should not be taken into account. The second states that society should do what it can to level the playing field among persons who compete for positions, especially during their formative years, so that all those who have the relevant potential attributes can be considered. Common to both positions is that at some point the principle of equal opportunity holds individuals accountable for achievements of particular objectives, whether they be education, employment, health, or income. Roemer argues that there is consequently a "before" and an "after" in the notion of equality of opportunity: before the competition starts, opportunities must be equalized, by social intervention if need be; but after it begins, individuals are on their own. The different views of equal opportunity should be judged according to where they place the starting gate which separates "before" from "after." Roemer works out in a precise way how to determine the location of the starting gate in the different views.

The Equal Opportunities Handbook is a guide to indentifying and eradicating workplace discrimination through training and guidance. The revised edition of this popular text has been updated to reflect changes in legislation and policy. This up-to-the-minute guide sets out straightforward procedures, relevant to all types of situation, and demonstrates how simple it is to behave with fairness, courtesy and sensitivity to all. Practical and realistic, this book will: • help readers to check their own behaviour and attitudes • provide guidance on fair treatment • give valuable information on the most important issues in equal opportunities The book includes personal action plans at the end of every chapter to aid learning and development, as well as a current A-Z of laws and agencies promoting equal opportunities.