Gender Regime

Gender Regime



Gender Regime

Introduction

The UK public sector generally has a long-standing commitment to equal opportunities in employment (Wilson and Iles, 1999 pp.44-60). Indeed some elements in the public sector are credited with being at the forefront of developments in this area (McDougall, 1996, pp.62-72), with a number of public services having equal opportunities policies before their private sector counterparts. However, despite some 30 years of equality legislation and the public sector's declared commitment to equal opportunities, there is still evidence of discrimination in this sector. Moreover, it has been suggested that in the light of the increasingly competitive environment in which public sector managers operate it may be difficult to maintain the levels of organisational commitment to equal opportunities (Walsh, 1995). It is against this background of limited success in, and difficulties facing, equal opportunities that the concept of managing diversity regime, has developed.

Discussion

Managing diversity regime has its origins in the USA (Kandola and Fullerton, 1994a). Its rationale is usually attributed to projections of the American labour force which indicated that white males would form a minority of new entrants in the labour force by the year 2000 (Johnson and Packer, 1987, pp 121-189). However, it has been argued that managing diversity regime will become increasingly influential in the UK in the late 1990s (Iles, 1995 pp.44-60), indeed a strategic business issue for many organisations (Dodds, 1995, pp.40-3). That this assertion is credible is due to not only the widespread demographic changes, but also to managing diversity regime potentially offering a complement or supplement to equal opportunities approaches. In 1996, the Institute of Personnel and Development heralded managing diversity regime as a vision for the development of equal opportunities.

Increasingly, equal opportunities approaches are viewed as being outdated and unable to meet future challenges, given that their origins lie in the social and political agendas of the 1960s and 1970s (Iles, 1995 pp.44-60; Wilson and Iles, 1999, pp 56-145). The wider social and political context in which the notion of managing diversity regime has developed is of particular relevance when considering the term in relation to the public sector. Cassell (1996 , pp.51-66) notes Jewson and Mason (1994, pp.597-617) who suggest that the emergence of managing diversity regime with its focus on individuals was in line with the rise of the “new right” who espoused the rhetoric of individualism and the advance of individual interest as the acceptable way to operate.

Awareness of managing diversity regime in the UK is becoming more widespread (Mavin and Girling, 2000, pp.419-33). Indeed, the term managing diversity regime has now entered the business lexicon for the 1990s, possibly even becoming a new “buzz-word” (Elmuti, 1993; pp.19-22, Roosevelt Thomas, 1996, pp.6-7). Certainly there are a plethora of definitions of the term (Ellis and Sonnenfield, 1994, pp.79-109; Thomas and Ely, 1996, pp.79-90).

This is the definition adopted here. Two aspects of this definition expressly differentiate it from equal opportunities: first, the emphasis on a positive perspective of differences among staff in contrast to the negative perspective ...