Equal opportunities policies – making a difference Available to Purchase

To what degree an organization both embraces the ethos of equal opportunities and backs it up with an investment in sound policies may be expected to have an impact on both the progress of women in management and their experience in the workplace in that organization. This paper compares how women managers fare in two organizations, one with a developed equal opportunities policy and one that has none. It also considers the limits of applying the business case concept of equal opportunities and the problems of a diversity approach and it explores the ways women themselves articulate gender issues according to the discourses they have available to them. It concludes that, while restrictive in its implementation, women managers are more able to articulate their needs and fare better in an organization with an equal opportunities policy than in one without.