Equal Opportunity Legislation Research Articles

Racial Discrimination in Sourcing: Evidence From Controlled Experiments

Entrepreneurial activity is widely seen as an important tool for addressing the racial wealth gap. However, the survival of minority-owned businesses depends on their ability to win contracts from buyer firms—which might be impacted by buyers’ racial biases. Whether discrimination can exist in sourcing and affect this ability is an unexplored question, perhaps due to an implicit assumption that business-to-business settings are immune from discriminatory biases. In this paper, we use controlled experiments to study whether racial discrimination can affect sourcing decisions. We find that when a supplier's sales manager has a distinctively Black name, buyers are 6.5% less likely (statistically significant at 1% level) to select that supplier compared to a supplier with a sales manager with a distinctively white name. Our findings suggest that equal-opportunity legislation similar to that already in place in the labor market may be needed in the sourcing context. Our findings have implications for executives, suggesting that supplier diversity programs and procurement-bias training can boost corporate performance by expanding the supplier pool, and simultaneously enhance a firm's corporate social responsibility profile.

Board of Trustees

This brief overview of my research explores the impact of one aspect of New Zealand's self-managing reforms on the changing and predicted gender profile of the principalship in primary schools. The research in progress is a national study of boards of trustees' selection practices of principals carried out in 2002. It examines how trustees interpret and act upon often contradictory and conflicting official discourses from self-managing policies and Equal Employment Opportunities (EEO) legislation, as well as populist discourses mobilised by the media. Using feminist discourse theory (Bacchi 2000) I argue that the reforms have not contributed to a significant shift in the gender diversity representation of the principalship.

‘Private Acts’ and Structural Inequality: Law and Housing Discrimination

This paper focuses on law and housing discrimination within the context of a sociological understanding of the cumulative disadvantageous effects of what are legally considered ‘private acts’. It therefore brings a distinct perspective to the examination of vertical versus horizontal rights. The paper particularly focuses on housing discrimination against Muslims in urban areas against the background of marginalisation, conflict, and violence. It seeks to think about housing segregation as both producing discrimination, targeted violence, economic inequality, and social exclusion as well as itself being a product of these factors. Public policy in the form of equal opportunities legislation has been the chosen instrument for tackling similar racial and ethnic discrimination in several countries worldwide. This paper argues that public activism could be significant in embedding values socially and making durable the legislation arising there from. At the same time, it calls on the notion of demosprudence to contend that in the context of deep-rooted structured inequalities, as the history of the US civil rights movement also shows, a primary judicial step triggered by the mechanism of social action litigation may be necessary.

Engaging feminist pedagogies to support equality bargaining in academia

ABSTRACT Despite decades of Equal Opportunity legislation, gender inequality persists in Australian universities. This is largely due to the shaping of universities by new market principles, discourses of individualisation that render the asymmetry of gender relations invisible, and privileging masculine epistemologies. Concurrently, industrial relations have been decentralised, and individual universities negotiate staff pay and working conditions through local Enterprise Bargaining (EB). Whilst EB mitigates the development of a national gender-equity framework for universities, trade unions operating through inequality regimes rarely prioritised gender equity even when they did lead national negotiations. Therefore, within a context of complex inequalities in higher education and trade unions, this paper explores how feminist pedagogies can facilitate equality bargaining and gender equality in academia. It also suggests that equality bargaining is especially important during (current) times of austerity when the removal of gender-equality support structures within trade unions generally occur.

Joking behaviours and bullying from the perspective of Australian human resource professionals

This paper examines the views of human resource professionals (HRPs) and employee representatives on joking behaviours and the potential link to workplace bullying in Australia. Individual semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 10 HRPs and five employee (union) representatives. Contextual factors stemming from Australian culture and historic characteristics of work in this country are discussed. The findings indicate that the legal framework – specifically, the definition of bullying and related legislation such as health and safety laws and equal employment opportunity legislation – is key for HRPs in establishing whether joking behaviours transgress into bullying. Implications for HRPs including ‘boundary’ management of joking behaviours are discussed and some ideas for future research are presented.

Legislative approaches to nondiscrimination at work: a comparative analysis across 13 groups in 193 countries

PurposeThere is substantial evidence of discrimination at work across countries and powerful evidence that antidiscrimination laws can make a difference. This study examines the extent of protections from discrimination at work in countries around the world and which groups were best covered.Design/methodology/approachThis study assesses legal protections in hiring, pay, promotions/demotions, terminations and harassment for 13 different groups across 193 countries using a database the authors created based on analysis of labor codes, antidiscrimination legislation, equal opportunity legislation and penal codes. Differences in levels of protection were examined across social groups and areas of work, as well as by country income level using Chi-square tests.FindingsProtection from gender and racial/ethnic discrimination at work was the most common, and protection across migrant status, foreign national origin, sexual orientation and gender identity was among the least. For all groups, discrimination was more often prohibited in hiring than in promotion/demotion. There was inconsistent protection from harassment and retaliation.Research limitations/implicationsAddressing discrimination at work will require a broad range of synergistic approaches including guaranteeing equal legal rights, implementation and enforcement of laws and norm change. This study highlights where legislative progress has been made and where major gaps remain.Originality/valueThis article presents findings from an original database containing the first data on laws to prevent discrimination in the workplace in all 193 countries around the world. The study analyzes legal protections for a wide range of groups and considers a full range of workplace protections.

Orthodox actors and equal opportunities policies in the Republic of Moldova in the context of the transformation of post-Soviet societies

This article examines how the key Orthodox actors in Moldova have reacted to challenging equal opportunities legislation. The author suggests, on the basis of an economic approach to religion, that under the conditions of a deregulated religious market they use various strategies to promote their agendas. The Moldovan Orthodox Church (the Metropolitanate of Moldova), autonomous within the Russian Orthodox Church, previously relied on making private bargains with the government; but this policy ended with the adoption of the 2013 Law on Ensuring Equality in the Republic of Moldova. Now the Metropolitanate tries to assimilate the strategies of direct action, but without success. The so-called ‘non-mentioning’ radicals, technically being part of the Metropolitanate of Moldova, but not praying for its bishop, are involved in direct political activism – from setting up protest camps to street fighting – to confront de-stigmatization of homosexuality. The Bessarabian Metropolitanate of the Romanian Orthodox Church utilizes the strategies of European ‘public’ churches and gains influence through performing some useful social functions. This article concludes that all actors have their own advantages and weaknesses; nevertheless, so far the Metropolitanate of Moldova remains the strongest; while the other competitors are serving specific religious niches, it is this body which still possesses the potential to influence society more broadly.

Discrimination and Social Justice: Questions of Diversity, Plurality, Representativeness, Measurability, and Doublespeak

One goal of social justice is to overcome discrimination. This goal implies that discrimination needs to be well understood so that once an endpoint has been reached people will know that justice has been achieved. Moreover, equal opportunity legislation in some legal jurisdictions requires a predefined endpoint to enable distinction between lawful and unlawful discrimination. In this article, we show that the concept of an endpoint is logically flawed. We also illustrate how the concept of discrimination is utilized inconsistently due to a shift between deontological and utilitarian frames of reference. This shift is a major factor leading writers of an EEO training module to fall into the traps of inaccuracy and doublespeak. Finally, we argue that futures-oriented thinking about social issues should entail a temporally open ended removal of barriers rather than imposition of quotas based on ostensible endpoints that have been invoked in legislation. This would enable avoidance of inconsistency and illogicality, without diminishing relevance to social justice.

Rethinking Non-Pecuniary Remedies for Defamation: The Case for Court-Ordered Apologies

Legal scholars have been encouraged to examine alternative remedies for defamation in response to an increasing criticism of monetary damages. Various types of non-pecuniary relief (such as retraction, right of reply, publication of court decisions or declaratory judgement) have been made the subject of elaborate studies. The role of court-ordered apologies as a non-pecuniary defamation remedy has been scarcely discussed in academic literature. The work that has been done focuses either on the remedial role of apologies in East Asian jurisdictions or on apologies as a civil legal remedy aimed at emotional recovery for specific kinds of harm (such as personal injury, invasions of privacy or violations of equal opportunity legislation). These studies, which mostly go beyond the scope of defamation law, pay very little attention to the Western legal tradition. The Anglo-American and continental-European legal culture are considered non-apologetic traditions, which are clearly unfamiliar with the remedy of imposing apologies. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, this article shows that court-ordered apologies are available as a defamation remedy in a non-negligible part of the Western legal tradition. This is demonstrated through a profound comparative legal analysis of continental legal systems (Western, Central as well as Eastern European jurisdictions), a mixed legal system (South-Africa) and common law systems. Simultaneously, this article allows us to gain a better understanding of why this remedy is still applied in some jurisdictions and why it has disappeared in others. The article proceeds on the premise that a case can be made for court-ordered apologies as a defamation remedy in the Western legal tradition, and accordingly, it is argued that they are worth considering in jurisdictions which do not make use (anymore) of this legal tool. First, in operating a symbolic reversal of the original defamatory assertion, court-ordered apologies are more likely to produce a shaming effect than other remedies. Second, it is possible to attribute an educative function to court-ordered apologies, allowing courts to educate members of the community about what constitutes unlawful and injurious statements. When examining the implementation of court-ordered apologies as defamation remedy, a civil-common law divide comes to the fore. Whereas apologies can be introduced in continental legal systems as a form of reparation, it is harder to import them into Anglo-American legal systems. The same goes for the reconciliation of this type of relief with freedom of expression, which is simpler to attain under the balancing test of the European Court of Human Right than in some common law systems.

Using transformative transition coaching to support leaders during career transitions

Senior leadership transitions present daunting challenges. To promote inclusive development and comply with equal opportunity legislation, South African companies often fast-track careers of high-potential previously disadvantaged individuals. Organisations typically do not sufficiently support transitioning leaders, possibly acting unethically. The rate of failure is high with devastating effects for the individual and their organisation. The novel, empirically researched Transformative Transition Coaching (TTC) framework, helps facilitate deep and lasting changes in meaning perspectives of transitioning leaders through coaching. The ability of the TTC framework to support transitioning leaders is presented in this article

De zevenkoppige draak van ongelijkheid

Abstract Diversity in the workforce – in terms of social identity categories such as gender, race, ethnicity, age, and class – has become a prime concern for organisations in both the public and private sectors. Despite decades of equal-opportunities legislation and numerous initiatives, progress towards equality, diversity, and inclusion in organisations remains – at best – slow. Inequality in organisations seems to be an unbeatable seven-headed dragon that has a multitude of faces in different economic, social, and cultural contexts. In this essay, Marieke van den Brink questions whether we have the right swords or bravest heroines to beat this tenacious dragon of inequality. She proposes to unravel the complexity and polyvocality of change by distinguishing between inequality practices – the routinised organisational practices that produce inequality regimes – and equality practices – the planned change interventions aiming for gender equality. Greater insight into the ways that gender equality practices and gender practices interact with, conflict with, and anticipate each other can further our knowledge and understanding of the slow rate of change that gender equality policies have managed to achieve.

Barriers to Career Advancement of Women in Mining: A Qualitative Analysis

In recent years, various initiatives, protocols and legislation have been developed globally to promote gender equality and address existing discrimination against women. South Africa is no exception to this trend. In the global mining industry, equal opportunity and mining legislation introduced by various countries, including South Africa, have opened up former bastions, such as mining, to women.Since the introduction of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act 28 of 2002 and the accompanying Broad-Based Socio- Economic Empowerment Charter, in 2004, the number of women in the mining industry has increased significantly. However, the “gender issue” still remains contentious and very problematic in the industry and women are still subjected to various challenges.This article aims to reveal the barriers women encounter in the industry. This study adopted a qualitative research design. Data were collected by means of semi-structured individual and group interviews. The research findings show that women are subjected to social, physiological, structural and employment barriers. Therefore, it is of paramount importance that the relevant government departments, top and senior management in the mining industry, as well as human resource managers and employment relations practitioners embrace and support a clear-cut vision of gender diversity in the industry.

The impact of team diversity on team outcomes in a Korean context: a case of a public enterprise

This study examined the effect of diversity on team performance in a Korean organization where differences among people are likely to be comparatively less accepted. More specifically, this study examined the impact of gender diversity, social equality selection diversity, and age diversity on commitment to the team, intention to remain in the team, and creative behavior. The results show that gender diversity was negatively related to commitment to the team and intention to remain in the team. On the other hand, none of three diversities was related to creative behavior. These results have several implications. Firstly, team diversity does not contribute to team performance in the Korean context. Instead, it appears that team diversity can have a negative impact on team performance, as shown in the impact of gender diversity on commitment to the team and intention to remain with the team. Even though the organization answering the questionnaire is a diversity-pursuing organization, the fact that managing diversity does not contribute to performance means that diversity management in a business case for equality does not work out in the Korean context. Thus, in order for the Korean government to promote equality, it would be a better strategy to pursue compliance with equal employment opportunity legislation, rather than focusing business case for equality. Secondly, social equality selection does not appear to have a negative effect on team performance. Korean organizations have been reluctant to hire employees from socially disadvantaged groups. However, the results showed that social equality selection is not significantly related to team performance. When employees` tasks are monotonous and repetitive, overqualified persons are not necessary, but optimally qualified individuals (such as those from socially disadvantaged groups) may contribute to performance as much as ordinary employees. Or, the organization`s careful pursuit of managing diversity in terms of socially disadvantaged groups may bring about these results. If so, if the organization pursues gender diversity in a careful and thoughtful manner, gender diversity may not produce negative team performance. In sum, if organizations provide careful diversity management considering the characteristics of jobs, diversity is not likely to produce negative performance but can produce positive results. The third implication is that diversity is not necessarily related to negative performance in the Korean context, as in the case of social equality selection diversity. Thus, the main direction for the pursuit of equality from the Korean government should be to reinforce regulations for hiring people from disadvantaged groups. For example, the Korean government can raise fines on a broad scale when organizations do not hire disabled people. Likewise, the Government can educate practitioners that diversity does not necessarily produce a negative performance. This will contribute to an achievement of equal employment opportunity in Korean society.

An analysis of male cultural hegemony in senior management in UK academia

This article examines how academia in the UK is created and perpetuated by men for men. It is based on three of the author’s research projects whose findings indicate patterns of discrimination in UK Higher Education (HE) institutes. The research projects collected both qualitative and quantitative data. The qualitative research involved in-depth semi-structured interviews with 80 academics, both women and men at all levels in the UK academic hierarchy. The quantitative research was undertaken via a website survey of the profiles of senior managers in UK HE institutes. The hypothesis is explored that an important mechanism for the continued narrow male-dominated senior management of HE is the disjuncture between formal and informal processes around university promotion. On the one hand, while transparent formal processes seek to locate promotions policies within Equal Opportunity (EO) legislation, other important informal processes are opaque, if not invisible, e.g. definitions of merit, and ways of fostering career development. Rather, these latter rely on particular forms of self-promotion, promotion by certain influential others, and subjective interpretation of policies in a way that tends to marginalise women. It is argued that male cultural hegemony, in replicating itself, perpetuates structures and practices that are insular and designed to primarily benefit a narrow group of men in senior management. These tend to be predominantly, from the disciplines in the physical sciences or engineering where men predominate. It argues that women need to challenge these structures and processes to make universities more compatible with the aspirations of women in academia and to make them more successful institutionally.

E-Recruitment, gender discrimination, and organizational results of listed companies on the Spanish Stock Exchange

The recruitment process aims to request relevant information from applicants, but sometimes this could be used to discriminate. Based mainly on the legal framework and the Rational Bias, the present paper explores the use of potentially discriminatory content against women in Spanish companies according to the enforcement of the equal employment opportunity legislation in 2007, and its relationship with organizational results. We have performed a comparative study between 2005 and 2009 implementing a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis. All the websites of the Spanish Stock Exchange were analyzed. Results show that companies did include potentially discriminatory questions in application forms, even after the law enforcement, but not in recruitment statements. Regarding organizational results, small but significant relationships between legal fulfillment and annual returns were found, but these results could have been influenced by factors attributable to the economic crisis. To conclude, we provide recommendations regarding desirable policies and organizational practices in the context of the area being studied.

Gender specification and occupational titles: An investigation of French women’s CVs

The adoption of antidiscrimination and equal employment opportunity legislation in France in 1983 sparked feminist language reform initiatives with the aim of legitimizing women’s participation in the workforce and better representing their role in French society. This article aims to evaluate the success of these feminist language planning reforms by investigating their impact in the wider speech community. In particular, it aims to explore French women’s selection of gender specification when describing their occupations, drawing from a set of CVs collected, in 2012, from the professional social network Viadeo. The analysis shows that women have become more willing to adopt feminine job titles that highlight their gender as well as their occupation, in particular for higher status posts, thus challenging norms of usage which discriminate against women.

Schooling and career aspirations of South Asian students

Background Numerous studies have been conducted in the West on the educational needs of minority students. These studies indicate that students from particular ethnic backgrounds have unsatisfactory educational experiences and various learning difficulties [1,2]. Although the HKSAR government, through its equal opportunity legislation, has committed itself to eliminating ethnic inequality, the South Asian minorities are confronted with various difficulties. Recent studies on the needs of these South Asian students suggest that they face various difficulties in adjusting to living in Hong Kong due to a number of interrelated factors, including insufficient Chinese language skills, lack of a tailormade Chinese curriculum for non-Chinese-speaking students, lack of knowledge about or access to available services, difficulties in finding school placements and employment opportunities, and discriminatory treatment [3]. Although many local studies have been conducted to investigate ethnic minority students’ difficulties in learning Chinese [4,5], little is known about their aspirations and perceived choices in schooling, training and employment.

The Long-term Unemployed: A New Protected Class of Employee?

Since the onset of the latest United States (U.S.) recession (beginning in December 2007), the U.S. economy has been posting high unemployment levels consistently exceeding 8 percent. Of specific interest, the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), reports on a specific subset of the U.S. unemployed: the long-term unemployed, defined as those who are unemployed for 27 weeks and over. Since December 2009, the share of the long-term unemployed of the total U.S. unemployed has exceeded 40 percent (through April 2012), the highest level since 1948 when data was first collected. A phenomenon of this recession is an alleged public bias by American private sector employers against hiring the long-term unemployed, or even simply those unemployed. While the authors support the removal of discrimination against the unemployed in job advertisements, they cannot support the larger notion of including those who are unemployed as a protected class of employees. Becoming or being unemployed is a state that one can change, and based on the lack of research on how widespread this discrimination is (beyond anecdotal stories or limited research surveys), they believe that extending protection under equal employment opportunity legislation would be overreaching and inappropriate at this time.

Eponyms in medical literature linked to nurses

Nursing is one of the oldest professions in the human life. It is a profession within the healthcare sector focused on the care of individuals. An eponym is a word derived from the name of a person. Most of the eponyms in medicine are after physicians and rarely to other healthcare providers like nurses. In Table I [1-8], I highlighted on two famous medical eponyms that are linked to nurses. The association with the name of a nurse represents beyond doubt a special feature and reflects the great contributions, these nurses made. There is no wonder that both eponyms are for females, as it is around the world, nurses have been traditionally female. And despite equal opportunity legislation, nursing has continued to be a female-dominated profession. EPONYMS IN MEDICAL LITERATURE LINKED TO NURSES

Motherhood and its impact on career progression

PurposeAfter many years of equal opportunities legislation, motherhood still limits womens' career progress even in a feminized occupation such as nursing. While the effect of motherhood, working hours, career breaks and school aged children upon career progression has been discussed widely, its actual scale and magnitude has received less research attention. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of these factors individually and cumulatively.Design/methodology/approachThis paper considers the impact of the above through a longitudinal analysis of a demographically unique national database, comprising the 46,565 registered nursing workforces in NHS Scotland from 2000‐2008. The variables examined include gender, employment grades, number and length of career breaks, lengths of service, age, working patterns, the number and age of dependent children.FindingsThe results indicate: motherhood has a regressively detrimental effect on women's career progression. However, this is a simplistic term which covers a more complex process related to the age of dependent children, working hours and career breaks. The degree of women's restricted career progression is directly related to the school age of the dependent children: the younger the child the greater the detrimental impact. Women who take a career break of greater than two years see their careers depressed and restricted. The results confirm that whilst gender has a relatively positive effect on male career progression; a women's career progression is reduced incrementally as she has more children, and part‐time workers have reduced career progression regardless of maternal or paternal circumstances.Originality/valueThis paper is the only example internationally, of a national workforce being examined on this scale and therefore its findings are significant. For the first time the impact of motherhood upon a women's career progression and the related factors – dependent children, career breaks and part‐time working are quantified. These findings are relevant across many areas of employment and they are significant in relation to broadening the debate around equal opportunities for women.