From Hard to Soft Law and from Equality to Reconciliation in the United Kingdom

Abstract

In the United Kingdom, equal pay was made law in 1970 before British accession to the European Community (EC) in 1973. Although the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975 came after EC membership, it was inspired by domestic political factors rather than any prompting from Europe; the British government was firmly committed to the goal of ending sex discrimination, at least in the workplace, before becoming a member of the EC. In terms of policy outputs and outcomes, rather than just policy aims, the United Kingdom’s political culture and policy delivery mechanisms have often placed it at variance with the European approach. Successive British governments adopted their own conception of what is meant by equal opportunities and their own methods of tackling the problem. As in many other policy areas, the result has often been conflict with Brussels. The United Kingdom has been characterized by a cautious, if not negative, approach to European legislation. Between 1989–97, governments showed a repeated reluctance to bring the United Kingdom into line with other member states. In this chapter, the origins and on-going causes of these difficulties are examined by analysing developments in two stages: hard law largely during the 1970s associated with equal opportunities policies; and soft law from the 1980s on, as reconciliation policies moved onto the agenda.KeywordsEuropean UnionEqual OpportunityParental LeaveIndirect DiscriminationEuropean Community DirectiveThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.