Abstract
This chapter critically explores the equal opportunities project in the context of an apparent decline in the salience of equal opportunities as a creative and purposive policy orientation. This context is shaped by challenges to the contemporary relevance of equality of opportunity, changes to political structures and practices, developments in the theoretical underpinnings of equal opportunities practice and public initiatives in relation to women and social justice. In order to understand both the current situation and the forces that will shape the future, the political meanings of the equal opportunities project are analysed first in terms of the strengths and weaknesses of modernist accounts of political reality, and second as a conflict between modernist and postmodernist approaches to politics. Given the prospects for the equal opportunities project, a generic approach to equality of opportunity is proposed as a means of responding to the erosion of equal opportunities as a political project.
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© 2002 Ian Forbes
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Forbes, I. (2002). The Political Meanings of the Equal Opportunities Project. In: Breitenbach, E., Brown, A., Mackay, F., Webb, J. (eds) The Changing Politics of Gender Equality in Britain. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230522572_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230522572_2
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