Play the White Man: The Social Construction of Fairness and Competition in Equal Opportunity Policies

Abstract

This paper discusses the impact of equal opportunity projects on women's employment in two public sector organisations. It examines the limitations of the emerging liberal model and assesses the likely effectiveness of alternative approaches. An Affirmative Action Program in a North American university was examined five years after its initiation. Despite standardised procedures for access to jobs and systematic monitoring, there was very little change in the degree of occupational segregation between men and women. A women's committee project in a UK university examined the present situations of women staff, with the aim of producing a strategy for change which would benefit women currently employed. This resulted in the identification of training provision, flexible working arrangements and the restructuring of job requirements as the central aspects of an alternative approach to equal opportunity policy. It is argued that, particularly in a recessionary economic climate, policies requiring employers to rethink job requirements in ways that do not exclude competent women should provide a more effective challenge to occupational segregation than liberal policies which concentrate on assessing the ‘suitability’ of individual job applicants in terms of conventional criteria.