Description of the approach to achieving equaltiy and diversity im employment brought about by recent anti-discrimination legislation in the UK and the impact of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, launched in October 2007.
Equal opportunity in the workplace is thought to be the direct legacy of the civil rights and feminist movements and the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. Frank Dobbin demonstrates the central role that employers themselves have played in the evolution of the understanding of equal opportunity and discrimination in America. .He traces how the first measures were adopted by military contractors worried that the Kennedy administration would cancel their contracts if they didn't take 'affirmative action'. These measures built on existing personnel programs, many designed to prevent bias against unionists. Dobbin follows the changes in the law as personnel experts invented one wave after another of equal opportunity programs. He examines how corporate personnel formalized hiring and promotion practices in the 1970s to eradicate bias by managers: how in the 1980s they answered Ronald Reagan's threat to end affirmative action by recasting their efforts as diversity-management programs: and how the growing presence of women in the newly named human resources profession has contributed to a focus on sexual harassment and work/life issues.