The Politics of Equal Opportunity

This paper reviews changes in the concept of ‘equal opportunities’ over the last twenty years and discusses the implications for women’s experiences in the workplace. The shift to notions of diversity and difference as the motif for equality initiatives reflects the right-wing critique of bureaucratic control and regulation of labour markets, embodied in 1970s' EO policies. ‘Diversity’ symbolizes the employer’s freedom from constraint in selecting and deploying the best ‘talent’ regardless of sex, ethnicity or disability. Ironically the radical feminist agenda, which asserts women’s differences from men and their potential for creating a better world, had been adapted to the concerns of liberal feminism with providing a rationale for the promotion of women into management, on the grounds that women’s nurturing capacities contribute to the diversity needed by post-modern organizations. A case study of a transnational computer and measurement systems manufacturer is used to illustrate the limited capacity of a market-driven version of diversity to dismantle the hierarchical gender order and its tendency to reinforce the ideology of competitive individualism with its white, male norms. In conclusion it is argued that we need to move beyond the ultimately limiting debate about whether women are the same as or different from men to a renewed concern with the material conditions of women’s lives and with the construction of equality initiatives which address the continuing exclusion of many women from adequate standards of living.