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The traditional and conservative image of the banking sector now misrepresents the true situation. Banks are in a process of experimentation, rethinking and change. Within this context efforts to create greater equality of opportunity for women must be made, since women form a larger proportion of the labour force in banks than in the economy as a whole. Characteristics of the industry and the position of women within it are examined in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Britain, Canada and the USA. Some of the issues related to change, and key efforts to bring about equality of opportunity in any organisation, are addressed. Both internal and external factors have contributed to and inhibited change.

There is substantial evidence of discrimination at work across countries and powerful evidence that antidiscrimination laws can make a difference. This study examines the extent of protections from discrimination at work in countries around the world and which groups were best covered.

This study assesses legal protections in hiring, pay, promotions/demotions, terminations and harassment for 13 different groups across 193 countries using a database the authors created based on analysis of labor codes, antidiscrimination legislation, equal opportunity legislation and penal codes. Differences in levels of protection were examined across social groups and areas of work, as well as by country income level using Chi-square tests.

Protection from gender and racial/ethnic discrimination at work was the most common, and protection across migrant status, foreign national origin, sexual orientation and gender identity was among the least. For all groups, discrimination was more often prohibited in hiring than in promotion/demotion. There was inconsistent protection from harassment and retaliation.

Addressing discrimination at work will require a broad range of synergistic approaches including guaranteeing equal legal rights, implementation and enforcement of laws and norm change. This study highlights where legislative progress has been made and where major gaps remain.

This article presents findings from an original database containing the first data on laws to prevent discrimination in the workplace in all 193 countries around the world. The study analyzes legal protections for a wide range of groups and considers a full range of workplace protections.

This chapter analyzes the influence of inclusion, equal opportunity and antidiscrimination policies on the strength of diversity in a foreign firm domiciled in a developing country.

It used a questionnaire to collect fact from the depth of employees’ experiences of diversity management in practice to understand its implication for the strength of diversity in the workplace. It questioned the nature of the constructs on diversity in line with the effect of equal opportunity in the workplace.

The component factor analysis extraction method obtained valuable constructs from the stated dimensions of items in the questionnaire. The regression technique was used to analyze the influence of these constructs on the strength of diversity in the workplace.

The results revealed that inclusiveness is necessary to intensify the strength of diversity in foreign organization in a developing nation, with the need to deepen alternative equal opportunity policy and diverse work culture awareness. Power relations strategies foster staff welfare, but weaken compensation by merit heighten employees’ sentiments.

Data were only collected from the companies head office; its branches were not covered.

Employees detect biases in equal opportunity policies beyond the guises of control power relation. Thus, besides a policy for diversity and inclusion in the workplace, an alternative equal opportunity policy is essential to intensify diversity.

It empirically probes foreign organizations in a developing country staff response to changes in the workplace due to the cautious implementation of inclusion, equal opportunity and antidiscrimination policies to foster diversity.

The representation of ‘the child’ within children's services and the representations of ‘risk’ and its management have implications for disabled people hoping to qualify for and work within certain professions. This article assesses the relevance for children's services of findings from the Disability Rights Commission's Formal Investigation into the impact of professional regulation on disabled people studying and working within three public sector professions in Britain ‐ nursing, social work and teaching. Many professional regulations include varied and vague requirements for ‘fitness’. These are interpreted and implemented differently, often informed by unexamined negative assumptions around disability. Disabled people, particularly those with ‘hidden disabilities’, can be discouraged from disclosing their conditions. This deprives them of the support and adjustments necessary for them to practise safely and effectively. Professional regulation can thus paradoxically induce a false sense of security. The various professions are urged to review and update their regulations, guidance and policies in order to ensure concordance with recent developments in disability and wider antidiscrimination legislation.

After the first transgender athletes participated in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, some called for the immediate exclusion of transgender women in sports while others argue that this exclusion is discriminatory behaviour in violation of human rights law. Under current standards, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has sought to address the balance between fairness and inclusion by allowing eligibility to be decided on a sport-by-sport basis for all transgender athletes (IOC, 2021). What if an international federation or national governing body concludes that transgender athletes should be prohibited or subjected to rigorous conditions for participation? Would those qualifications stand up to legal challenge by an affected athlete? Will some athletes have better legal protection based on the location of their challenge?

The United States (US) and United Kingdom (UK) have domestic legal provisions that protect transgender individuals from discrimination based on their gender identity whereas the European Union (EU) includes protections based on sex alone (Patel, 2021). This chapter will discuss transgender inclusion policies in Olympic sport and address how potential challenges to the policies will be handled in court using existing case law. Legal precedent in similar challenges is rare. However, when eligibility policies do not explicitly ban transgender athletes or appear to be a targeted response to a specific athlete or individuals, it becomes more likely that those policies will not be considered discriminatory. Courts are hesitant to interfere in a governing body's policies if that organization appears to have a legitimate reason for its sport governance decisions.

This chapter assesses how gender and disability status intersect to shape employment and earnings outcomes for working-age adults in the United States.

The research pools five years of data from the 2010–2015 Current Population Survey to compare employment and earnings outcomes for men and women with different types of physical and cognitive disabilities to those who specifically report work-limiting disabilities.

The findings show that people with different types of limitations, including those not specific to work, experienced large disparities in employment and earnings and these outcomes also varied for men and women. The multiplicative effects of gender and disability on labor market outcomes led to a hierarchy of disadvantage where women with cognitive or multiple disabilities experienced the lowest employment rates and earnings levels. However, within groups, disability presented the strongest negative effects for men, which created a smaller gender wage gap among people with disabilities.

This chapter provides quantitative evidence for the multiplicative effects of gender and disability status on employment and earnings. It further extends an intersectional framework by highlighting the gendered aspects of the ways in which different disabilities shape labor market inequalities. Considering multiple intersecting statuses demonstrates how the interaction between disability type and gender produce distinct labor market outcomes.

Purpose – This is a comparison of the role of the police in the enforcement of immigration law in the interiors of three nations: Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Methodology – The study builds upon research the authors have already done as well as desk research on recent developments. It uses three dimensions of the problem to focus the report: the hardware, software, and culture of police involvement in this issue.

Findings – In Germany, the local police are responsible for the enforcement of immigration control and have relatively fast and reliable means to identify undocumented immigrants. This is not the case in the United Kingdom and the United States, but there are trends toward more local police involvement, both by institutional cooperation and by the development of better databases and documents for faster identification. These trends are highly controversial in an environment that values community relations and is highly sensitive to racial profiling. However, there are also indications that the differences in typical police work such as traffic controls and crime investigation may not be as pronounced as the differences between the countries would suggest.

Research implications – This study highlights the need for ethnographic work with the police and with unauthorized immigrants to empirically describe and assess the role that the police are playing and its impact on police–community relations.

Practical implications – The German experience supports the value of a comprehensive information system for rapidly determining the immigration status of suspects, but it may not work as expected in the United States and the United Kingdom, where registration and identification obligations apply to foreign citizens only. With the US and UK experiences, one could predict that discriminating identification practices may become more sensitive issues in a Germany with increasing numbers of immigrated citizens.

The purpose of this paper is to use neo‐institutional theory to examine organizational responses to the age discrimination at work legislation, recently introduced in the UK. The paper examines reasons managers advanced for the introduction of human resource (HR) policies about age discrimination, in addition to legal compliance.

A longitudinal survey of HR managers and four case studies within a range of UK organizations are used to elicit data on organizational responses.

Unsurprisingly, the introduction of the new legislation has created strong coercive pressure on organizations. However, the results also provide evidence of mimetic and normative pressures within organizations. There is a complex range of factors that influence changes to policies and practices. In addition, the impact of organizational context, manager stereotypes and public and private sector differences are examined. The implications for explaining coercive change in organizations in terms of different legal philosophies and for future research are discussed.

This paper adds to a currently sparse literature on the introduction of age discrimination policies by organizations and uses a neo‐institutional framework to examine the forces that may affect the introduction of these policies over and above legislation.

The results of four research studies aimed at identifying and reducing the barriers for women within banks show that “structural” and “attitudinal” factors exist. Structural factors include personnel procedures and practices, organisation structure and the existence of all‐male jobs. Attitudinal factors can be found among managers, women and in unions. In British banks many managers are convinced that women are not interested in or not prepared to commit themselves to mobility and professional study for their career. Women who are prepared to do so are not asked to do so, or have been discouraged. More than 200,000 women now form the majority of employees in banks but only just over 1 per cent of managers are women. Banking is currently in a state of change. These trends are creating uncertainty and pessimism about women's future in banking. At the same time some of the larger clearing banks are taking active steps to remove some of the barriers which women face. Positive action programmes introduced by Barclays Bank, National Westminster Bank and the Midland Bank are outlined. These illustrate how different cultures and circumstances can result in different if equally effective strategies for change. The historical development of women's employment in banking is outlined and issues for the future discussed.