To What Extent Feminist Ideas Have Influenced Policy Concerningpect Equal Opportunities - Essay Example

To what extent feminist ideas have influenced policy making with respect to ‘Equal Opportunities’ since 1965? Though equality has been a priority of British government policy-making at various stages since 1965, but ‘equality of opportunity’ after 1970s onwards was mainly concerned with the increased gender and racial equality. Indeed, the 1960s and 1970s were most influenced by concerns about equality of opportunity, both in the political arena and in education. Apart from the legislation of equal pay, the contribution social feminist brought to the development towards ‘independent beginnings’ had a profound influence on the development issue of equal opportunities (Tomlinson & Trew, 2002, p. 5). Before 1979, policies that came under the Labour and Conservative governments were more oriented towards greater equality and increased economic growth than on any other goal. The main legislation associated with equal opportunities at this time were the Equal Pay Act (1970, coming into force in 1975), the Sex Discrimination Act (1975) which specifically included education, and with respect to ‘race’ issues, the Race Relations Act (1976). All these Acts set legislation towards a range of policies which were initiated and developed by individual teachers, schools and local authorities, many of whom were anxious to see enacted the spirit as well as the letter of the legislation. Equal Opportunities and Schooling Feminists played a significant role in inducing EU to emerge new strategies ensuring equality of opportunities regardless of gender, culture or race. The main concern however was to point the EU towards recognising inadequacies in schooling for girls. The school curriculum was followed by obsolete syllabuses and content were found to exclude the experiences of girls and women whether white or black. At secondary level, where choice was available, girls tended to opt for humanities, languages and social science, and boys for Science, Mathematics and technological subjects (Pratt et al. 1984). Also, students tended to be directed into traditionally male and female subjects and careers, and in the main, girls’ careers were believed to be less important than boys’. The hidden or unwritten curriculum of schooling was also found to exert pressure on students and staff to conform in sex-specific ways. For example, there were different rules on uniform and discipline for girls and boys, and sexual harassment and verbal abuse were found to be common features of school life (Lees, 1987). These inequalities were felt by the teachers and advisory staff and by the early 1980s female teachers began to develop a range of strategies in order to counter these inequalities. These included persuading secondary students to opt for non-traditional subjects such as physics for girls and modern languages for boys; encouraging wider career aspiration through non-discriminatory careers’ advice; revising reading schemes and school texts to be less sexist and more inclusive. Female pupils and their problems were considered, and for them female senior staff were hired that presented as a positive role model, which established equal opportunities working parties, policy statements and posts of responsibility (Arnot and Weiner, 1987). It was the feminist thoughts that transformed the then main concerns of removing sexual practices from the young girls’ lives. At primary or elementary levels, with the help of female teachers, it was made possible only through feminine efforts to help girls to become more assertive and removing sexist practices from the formal and hidden curriculum; and at secondary schools, raising the profile of young women in the labour market, persuading girls into Science and Mathematics. It was the feminist thought behind every action that helped bring back the perceived decline of girls’ performance and self-confidence during adolescence (Millman, 1987). The local education authorities (LEA) of the EU came to realise in the mid-1980s that there is a need to change the scenario in context with the change in municipal socialism. Therefore LEA with the assistance of feminist support for equality initiatives as part of their challenge to New Right policies sharply focused on ‘simplistic’ policies and was able to produce and combine different facets of gender policy-making. At that time different feminists work made difference in the issues that served as the crux of inequality like gender, race, class and ethnicity as different feminisms began to make an impact on education equality (Minhas, 1986). Despite making the 1988 Education Reform Act and subsequent legislation, EU failed to alleviate the ethnic and racial differences. Therefore feminist and equality activists while considering the sensitivity of ‘equality’ were confronted by what seemed to be a fragmentation of political effort with the emergence of identity politics around different forms of feminist, masculine, black and minority ethnic voices (Weiner, 1994). Simultaneously, concepts of equality of opportunity and justice continued to be promoted within New Right discourses, but in individualistic and weak forms: for instance, the rough justice of the market and the aspirations of the individual were superimposed over post-war welfares and equality initiatives targeted at identified social groups and communities. Equal opportunities uphold a voluntary dimension from the mid-1970s until the mid-1980s, which only acquired the attention of committed politicians, teachers and local authorities. At that time feminist movements raise awareness among individual teachers and head teachers to support one of several funded curriculum development projects (Whyte et al. 1984). Thus it would not be wrong to say that EU local and regional authorities did nothing about ‘equality’. This is evident from the initiatives that were taken in response to the feminist movements. Those initiatives were short-term, built on a small-scale, were temporary and only catered local people who were devoid of ‘equality’ particularly in job opportunities, this way the national picture of UK was difficult to ascertain. By the late 1980s, as the Conservative government increased emphasis on achievement and standards, interest in gender shifted from policy and practice towards patterns of difference in examinations, and between girls and boys of different social groups (Gipps and Murphy, 1994). In context with ‘European equal opportunities’ associated was the dilemma until the mid-1990s that by considering ‘equal opportunities’ solely ‘gender equality’ is meant. This meant that throughout the EC’s training policy, the inequality experienced by women was addressed solely as gender inequality, and the solution to this was equally gender based: women were to be given access to that which men had. There was a general failure within the EU to understand that women also experienced discrimination because of their ethnicity, social class, age and geographical location as well as their gender. Feminists while recognising this loophole, worked hard to make EU understand what it meant to say ‘equal opportunities’. Therefore it was made possible through the efforts of feminists that in 1990s ‘mainstream’ equal opportunities programmes implied a more sophisticated view of the complex nature of discrimination and an appropriate strategy for positive action. The feminists efforts turned successful with flying colours and by the mid-1990s the hitherto implicit relationship between training policy and peace within and across the member states was found in the Commission’s repeated references to the fear of social unrest, to the concern with long-term unemployment, social exclusion and the rise of neo-fascism (EC, 1995). The result was the Treaty of Amsterdam (EC, 1997) which recognised the increased pressure placed on the intricate relationship between economic growth, peace and the construction of the EU by its enlargement to include Cyprus and the Central and Eastern European Countries of Estonia, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovenia. European Equal Opportunities Policy The most common flaw of the European Social Fund (ESF) (as part of the EU) was that it considered women as a targeted group since the 1971 Reform. The ESF’s Objective 3, (ESF/3), has been the largest funder of training programmes in the UK with 60 per cent of the UK’s ESF/3 allocation from the EC match-funds all of the UK government’s own Youth Training and Employment Training programmes (Salisbury & Riddell, 2000, p. 101). The ESF/3 was divided into four distinct priorities between the years 1994-99 and is called as ‘pathways’ by the UK government. The first pathway was dedicated to employment, second to a good start in working life; third, pathways to integration; and fourth, pathways for equal opportunities for men and women. A key policy which was documented by the European training policy was the Commission Regulation on the Structural Funds for 1994-99 (Official Journal, 1993). This was all about the ways to design strategy to mainstream equal opportunities and tackle unemployment. The strategy was too good to be true, with particular emphasis on mainstreaming the EC provided specific provision aimed at tackling ongoing inequalities between women and men. Whilst promoting ‘equal opportunities for men and women’, the Commission clearly intended that the Equal Opportunities pathway should address the under-representation and under-qualification of women, targeting those women ‘not possessing vocational qualifications, or returning to the labour market after a period of absence’. Furthermore it was decided under the influence of feminism that priority was to be given to training women for occupations in which they were under-represented. However, all feminist efforts put to an end when it was decided that despite its reference to ‘women’, the discourse of ESF provision would show that funds were clearly targeted on a ‘particular’ group of women, low and under-educated women, women most at risk of unemployment and social exclusion (Council of Europe, 1992). The EC’s Equal Opportunities Unit which established in 1976 and began its first Action Programme in 1982 was followed by its introduction in the Third Action Programme between 1991 and 1995. The concern for equal opportunities became a major theme of the Fourth Action Programme between 1996 and 2000. This ‘equal opportunity’ programme reflected in UK policy by 1996, which according to research revealed that it was not actually a concern for ‘equal opportunity’, rather the immediate trend was towards the marginalisation of training for women (Brine, 1996). Since 1996, the concept of ‘equal opportunities’ marginalised women’s issues and was fortunate to redefine itself to enter in documents produced for the EC by the UK government. Though it no longer remained gender specific but then was concerned with race, disability, age and religion as well as gender and ‘women’s rights more generally’. However, the meaning of ‘equal opportunities’ was not clarified. When the European discourse of equal opportunities exclusively relates that to feminism, the UK discourse of equal opportunities has been more generally inclusive. This redefinition brought the European and the UK concepts of equal opportunities to a point where it was diluted that the EU attempt to mainstream gendered equal opportunities in order to give unemployed women access to the full range of funded training opportunities within ESF/3. Feminist writer like Evans emphasises on the need for more democracy to address discrimination against women was part of a broader conception of equal opportunity that links it to the later evolution of ‘catch all’ organisational policies prescribing equal treatment for a range of social groups commonly subject to discrimination, particularly ethnic minorities and disabled people, in addition to women (LWLC, 1979). According to Snell et al. (1981) up to 1970, when the act of Equal Pay was passed, it remained priority for women’s organisations. However after it was passed in 1970, the Act received assent that was exactly 82 years after an 1888 TUC resolution called for ‘equal pay for the same work, thus constituting ‘the longest standing wage claim in the history of the trade union movement’ (Snell et al, 1981, p. 2). Equal Opportunities in “The National Health Service” Equal opportunities policies developed and implemented slow in the NHS, and indeed it was not required by the Sex Discrimination Act to adopt such policies. Davies and Rosser’s (1986) research found that there was a climate of hostility towards equal opportunities policies with regard to women, in the sense that the male career path in which the employee was one hundred per cent committed to work, was regarded as the norm, with women’s family commitments leading to support for the widespread assumption that they were rarely in a position to meet that commitment requirement (Davies & Rosser, 1986, p. 30). In particular it was hardly felt by anyone that it was justified to take measures to aid women with domestic commitments to take a full part in the organisation as in accordance with the equal opportunity policies. Though the equal opportunity policies were implemented in the NHS, until 1982, research was conducted and it was discovered that despite a number of health authorities advertising themselves as ‘equal opportunity employers’, no health authority was there which had adopted an equal opportunity programme and made arrangements for its monitoring and evaluation. By the mid 1990s, however, the NHS Executive had established an Equal Opportunity Unit, designed to draw together health service initiatives in race, disability and gender, and the Executive asserted that ‘as one of the largest employers in Europe the NHS is committed to becoming an equal opportunity employer’ (NHS Executive, 1996). ‘Equality in opportunities’ cannot be completed without the concern of gender and that even along with ethnicity, race and class as they have played an important role in discovering how volunteer school governors were going to enact and cope with a range of new and demanding responsibilities given to them via education reform legislation passed in England between 1986 and 1989. The ways in which gender in context with ‘equal opportunity’ relations and identities appear to be relevant to enactment of governance, it seemed that the main concern of ‘equal opportunity’ is forgotten behind ‘gender’ issue. This can be seen from a broad spectrum where the extent to which gender identities and relations figure in the motivations of women and men to become governors and the kinds of experiences which they regard are appropriate to draw upon in their mainstream activities. These concerns do not rest on an essentialist assumption that all women are the same certainly; but to the notion that ‘equal opportunity’ is always concerned about even when women are in politics, women governors differed considerably in their membership of ethnic groups, their social class and occupational status, as well as in political allegiance. However, what is evident in that ‘equal opportunity’ context is that some underlying cultural assumptions of governors in general grouped women together for certain purposes as though they were the same. Further dimensions of equality are the gender dynamics of governing body meetings and the extent to which discourses about schools and education markets may exclude women, or position them in particular gender specific relationships. Equality in context with the labour market is under the influence of profound restructuring in economies and markets as welfare states operate under increasing external constraints. Today, Britain’s workplaces are influenced heavily by feminism (The Daily Mail, Dec 29, 2005). But the causes, magnitude and direction of labour market and welfare state restructuring are contested. Welfare state and labour market structures and processes are gendered, and thus change might affect women and men differently, transforming prevailing gender structures (Boje & Leira, 2000, p. 89) Equality and gender makes the labour market versatile as that of a deregulated market in which state regulations and organised labour inhibit the free functioning of markets. Once the model state for much welfare state research, and also a model state for gender equality policies, the Scandinavian states, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, have shared several commonalities (Baldwin, 1996). The notion of welfare state regimes has become very influential in comparative welfare state research, and the Scandinavian countries are often classified as one type of policy regime, although this is contested. Regime typologies of welfare states and, of gender relations, have been important in sensitizing and theorising the significance of politics and institutions in explaining social structures and practices (Lewis, 1992). The main advantage that European and Scandinavian states have acquired is that they have reshaped policies in the form of clustered packages, rather than as single issue policies. ‘Gender’ and ‘equal opportunities’ are two issues embedded in the labour market which are shaped in the interplay of economic structures, state policies, cultural ideas and historical traditions. However has been a tendency to confine the analysis of the impact of welfare states on gender equality in the labour market to the study of further policies. However, gender from a school or classroom environment to a political symbol confronts lack of equal opportunities in crucial ways. What is needed to understand the impact of policies and institutions on gender and equality relations is not a set of another policies or acts, but implementation. Works Cited Arnot, M. and Weiner, G. (eds) (1987) Gender and the Politics of Schooling, London: Hutchinson. Baldwin, P. 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Weiner (eds) Gender and the Politics of Schooling, London: Hutchinson. Lewis, J. (1992) “Gender and the Development of Welfare Regimes” In: Journal of European Social Policy, 2: 159-73. LWLC, London Women’s Liberation Campaign for Legal and Financial Independence and Rights of Women (1979) ‘Disaggregation now’ In: Feminist Review, no. 2. Millman, V. (1987) ‘Teacher as researcher: a new tradition for research on gender’, in G. Weiner and M. Arnot (eds) Gender Under Scrutiny, London: Hutchinson Minhas, R. (1986) ‘Race, gender and class: making the connections’, in ILEA (ed.) Secondary Issues, London: ILEA. NHS Executive (1996) Annual Report-1995/6, London: NHS Executive. Official Journal (1993) OJL 193, Council Regulation (EEC) No 2084/93 of 20 July 1993, Brussels: European Commission. Pratt, J., Bloomfield, J. and Seale, C. 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