Abstract
This paper revisits Jewson and Mason's seminal theoretical framework on liberal and radical approaches to equal opportunity policy and practice by applying it to our research on the implementation of the Gender Equality Duty in UK local government. Conducted at the height of Thatcherism, Jewson and Mason's research offers a useful platform for assessing equality initiatives in local government during periods of political hostility to equality underpinned by cuts to public services, which in more recent time is ascribed to austerity. Drawing on qualitative research in five case study local authorities, this paper assesses strategies for protecting and promoting gender equality practices and policies in the face of change within public services. We analyse three types of politics of equality (political philosophy, organizational politics and party politics) that feature in Jewson and Mason's analysis. In line with recent feminist research, our data indicate that equality specialists continue to use both liberal and radical discourses in instrumental ways to promote equality and resist change as described by Jewson and Mason, but these were more clearly framed within business case arguments influenced by the modernization agenda of the 1990s. Our data indicate that even business case arguments have been unable to protect equality initiatives from the 2010 coalition government's austerity and cuts agenda.
Highlights
In 1986 Nick Jewson and David Mason published their seminal article ‘The Theory and Practice of Equal Opportunities Policies: Liberal and Radical Approaches’ in The Sociological Review
The difficult passage of the Equality Act 2010 and the new public sector equality duty highlights the political nature of equality in public service delivery. This has been considerably accentuated by the emergence of the latest economic crisis and gendered austerity as the political response, which coincided with the move from a distinct gender equality duty to a single equality duty covering 8 different strands in the Equality Act 2010
Our findings indicate that the Gender Equality Duty (GED) was a powerful mechanism for engaging public service delivery teams to mainstream gender equality in their day-to-day work
Summary
In 1986 Nick Jewson and David Mason published their seminal article ‘The Theory and Practice of Equal Opportunities Policies: Liberal and Radical Approaches’ in The Sociological Review. Jewson and Mason’s research highlighted the difficulty of resisting political hostility to equality underpinned by an economic policy premised on cuts to public services, which has particular resonance in the current economic climate of austerity. Both periods of recession had gendered impacts, there were differences in political approaches in the UK that are explored in the theoretical and empirical contribution in the paper. This paper revisits Jewson and Mason’s seminal theoretical framework along with some of the influential feminist research that critiqued and built upon it by applying it to our research on the implementation of the Gender Equality Duty (GED) in local government in a difficult economic and political context. The GED offered hope of a way forward but political tensions remain and our paper considers how these have manifested in relation to the GED and why the early hopes for a new approach have been difficult to realise
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