Social Movements and Equal Opportunities Work

Abstract

Social movements of the 1960s and later have radically challenged the existing situation of Black people, women, lesbians and gay men, and disabled people. These movements had their impact on many areas of society. The enactment of equal opportunities legislation, such as, in the UK case, the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act, the 1976 Race Relations Act and the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act,¹ arose to a large extent because of these social movements. Similarly, within many organisations the development of equal opportunities policies and the establishment of specialist services for particular groups in society owe their origins to these radical social movements. Nonetheless the link between equal opportunities policies and social movements is often not acknowledged, particularly when equal opportunities as an issue becomes sanitised as ‘good personal practice’ or ‘the management of diversity’. However, Halford’s work (Halford and Durcan, 1991; Halford, 1992) explored the extent to which the local state could be used to implement feminist policies. Halford charted the growth of women’s initiatives in local government, using ‘women’s initiatives’ as an umbrella term to include the adoption of policies, the establishment of women’s committees, the appointment of women’s officers and the creation of women’s units. Her work indicates that women’s initiatives were more likely to occur in Labour-controlled councils, in urban areas, especially London, and in parts of the country with a higher than average proportion of single women and women in full-time work, suggesting an influential feminist presence in the local community.