Categories of Exclusion: ‘Race’, Gender and the Micro-social in Social Services Departments

Abstract

In the two to three decades since the political activism of ‘new social movements’ put the question of equality onto organisational agenda, a profoundly deepened understanding of the potential gains of, and constraints upon, equalities policies has developed. Equalities policies and strategies have been examined to reveal distinctions as to their scope and the political visions which underwrite them, as in, for example, Jewson and Mason’s (1986) early attempt to categorise equality policies and distinguish between their ‘liberal’ and ‘radical’ variants. Similarly, a more finely tuned distinction between the objectives or targets of equality policies has occurred, as between equality of opportunity, equality of treatment and equality of outcome. Blakemore and Drake (1996) have amalgamated these two strands and divided equalities policies into minimalist and maximalist forms. In practice the attempt to construct typologies by distinguishing between the political philosophies underpinning equal opportunities policies, their scope and objectives can lead to some problematic blind alleys. It can lead to an overstated divide among approaches, whilst obscuring their degrees of convergence (Forbes, 1991). Similarly, it can lead to simplistic characterisations of conservative and progressive forms of equal opportunities (Cockburn, 1989).