Suchergebnisse

The primary bodies of law which regulate the paid work of women are labour law and occupational health and safety law (OHS law). Other areas of law such as anti-discrimination law or company law certainly impact on women but women's experience of paid work is most affected by labour and OHS law. Despite the importance of these areas of law for women, labour law and OHS law curricula have remained gender-biased and women have been largely invisible within mainstream teaching (and research). They have been confined to what are effectively the "women's pages" of the curriculum, that is issues such as equal pay, affirmative action and protective legislation. Labour law curricula have been dominated by technical questions of constitutional interpretation, by traditional analyses of the contract of employment and by statutory analysis emphasising the legal issues relevant to the control of trade unions and industrial action. They have been constructed according to traditional views of legal scholarship and have consequently emphasised the complexities of the legal issues arising from court decisions and statutory provisions. In this short paper it will be argued that the sine qua non for a gender inclusive curriculum is the rejection of traditional legal scholarship and a focus on the legal issues which are of concern to working women.

Purpose– An increasing number of countries have introduced duties for public-sector organisations who, in addition to addressing discrimination, are now also required to promote equality of opportunity between different groups. The purpose of this paper is to explore the limited progress of gender equality policies, through a study of the local implementation of equalities policies. The authors highlight the role of equalities leads in the public sector as local "agents of change", and explore explanations of the implementation gap between policy and practice.Design/methodology/approach– The paper reports on a small-scale qualitative study with equalities leads in the health sector in England. The study comprised semi-structured interviews with equalities leads from nine health organisations which were purposively selected to include a mix of areas and populations. The interviews focused on the leads' backgrounds and their perceptions of barriers to their work.Findings– The equalities leads had a range of experience prior to their current post, though most had little formal subject-specific training. They highlighted a number of barriers to effective implementation of gender equality strategies, including resource issues, the impact of organisational change, the increased the number of equalities they were expected to address, organisational perceptions that gender was no longer a priority and resistance to what are seen as "tick box" exercises.Originality/value– The value of this paper is that it adds to the understanding of the challenges facing the implementation of gender equalities policies in the health sector, the reasons for these and the role of local policy implementers in the effectiveness of national equalities policies.