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Equality and diversity are generally positioned as special interests, marginal to the mainstream of social policy teaching and learning. The purpose of this paper is to make the case for shifting equality and diversity out of the margins and into the centre of education for mid career public managers, and offers practical methods for doing so.

The current EU policy framework requires public services to go beyond eliminating discrimination, and to promote equality. The paper suggests that while this offers great opportunities for advancing the cause of social justice, the cultures that predominate in public policy may lead to loss and failure. Academic research and experience demonstrate that these changes are highly complex, touching on issues that are integral to our sense of who we are, and how we relate to each other as educators and students, and as enforcers, beneficiaries and implementers of these policies. The paper touches on deeply held emotions, showing that more exploration of appropriate pedagogical methods is needed.

The paper finds that only by raising issues of equality and diversity to mainstream social policy teaching and learning is there likely to be a shift in thinking and commitment that will encourage integration of equality measures within management and leadership of public.

The paper offers three dimensions of pedagogy for enabling public service managers to engage with diversity and the equality agenda within educational contexts, and offers three illustrations of pedagogic processes that support this learning.

The purpose of this paper is to report on an analysis of direct age discrimination cases by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the UK courts and employment tribunals over an 11-year period. The paper focusses upon age stereotyping towards older workers and analyses whether it is endorsed at the European level and/or national level.

This research has analysed a sample of 100 employment tribunal judgments concerning direct age discrimination together with 28 CJEU decisions on direct age discrimination.

This paper highlights that there are a number of cases in which age stereotyping has been endorsed at the CJEU level. By contrast, the UK courts and employment tribunals have adopted a more robust approach.

The main limitation is that it only considers case law from the European Court and the influence on the UK case law, without analysing the eventual decisions of the other EU member states.

The paper contributes to the debate with regard to the approach of the CJEU and the UK courts and employment tribunals in tackling age stereotyping and is the first to examine the influence the CJEU decisions has had on the UK jurisprudence over the period studied.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the politicisation of age discrimination in relation to the enactment of anti-discrimination legislation in Finland and Sweden in the early-2000s. By showing how politicians constructed the meaning of age discrimination, it seeks to highlight the drivers of country variation in terms of the implementation of directives from the European Union (EU).

The paper uses a comparative design based on content analyses of parliamentary documents. Theoretically, it uses discursive institutionalism as a starting point but it also builds on previous research/theories on age discrimination.

The findings show that although age was seen as a ground for discrimination in both countries, there was surprisingly little debate about discrimination as societal problem. There was however considerable differences between the countries suggesting that age discrimination was a much more heated subject in Sweden.

Although the analysis focuses on a small part of the policy-making process it highlights drivers (such as political culture) that may cause variation in the ways age discrimination is politicised, even within similar welfare state regimes. It also suggests that more research is needed to fully understand such drivers.

The paper presents examples that can help analysts and the public to deconstruct institutionalised practices of age discrimination and thereby to understand how age discrimination practices may prevail in society.

By analysing the ways in which age discrimination was constructed as a problem within national policy-making frameworks, the paper presents valuable insights as to the sources of country variation in relation to the implementation of EU directives.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an analytical review of the key jurisprudence of the European Court and to present the argument that a more conservative approach is being adopted when considering the objective justification defence in dismissals by reason of retirement.

A review approach is adopted in the paper, with a primary focus on recent European Court decisions, whilst appreciating existing literature on the position of retirement cases. Attempts were made to draw together the evidence which suggests a shift in approach to objective justification in this context.

The paper reveals that the approach being adopted in retirement cases appears to be devaluing the age discrimination protections, through allowing individual, subjective reasons to justify less favourable treatment, despite the express wording of the Parent Directive precluding such an approach. It is highlighted that this could have damaging practical implications by placing a much lighter burden on employers when arguing objective justification of retirement dismissals.

The paper's main limitation is that it only considers case law from the European Court, without considering the approach adopted in any of the EU member states, where the eventual approach will be decided. However, this paper provides useful analysis of the approach being adopted in the European Court which is the ultimate interpreter of EU law, whilst questioning whether it is the correct approach.

The paper is the first to examine the shifting approach to objective justification in retirement cases.

The aim of this paper was to explore commonalities between HIV/AIDS-related conditions, obesity and other disabling impairments as health-related barriers that limit opportunity and advancement in society and the workplace. Taking a number of examples from original fieldwork and European Union (EU) and United Kingdom (UK) law, we posited that ‘disability discrimination’ under EU law remains an indefinite, imprecise and incomplete area that requires greater alignment with the social model of disability. The principle attributes of societal discrimination towards people living with HIV and obese people are that these conditions are perceived to be primarily or in some instances, solely caused by controllable factors related often to behaviours and lifestyle choices. Strong beliefs that these conditions are controllable are perceived as a justification and in some instances encouragement for the creation of stigma and discriminative behaviours that are unjust and uninformed. The structure of the paper is as follows. First, this paper postulated how and why stigma exists towards both individuals with disabilities and also obese individuals and people living with HIV; second, reviewed the legal framework on disability discrimination in both UK and EU courts that are directly relevant to the concepts of obesity and HIV-AIDS; third, presented critical thoughts as to the extent to which emerging decisions of the Court of Justice of the EU concerning obesity and HIV-AIDS accord with the social model of disability and fourth, offered an analysis of the implications of the UK and European framework and suggested possible interventions in this area.

This paper aims to consider, from a legal perspective, the problem of housing discrimination which has become an issue of increasing importance in Spanish cities, as in other European cities, especially in the light of recent waves of immigration.

The paper analyzes the various types of housing discrimination and explains what legal reactions are available under European, Spanish and Catalan Law.

The Catalan Right to Housing Act 2007 represents one of the first and most complete European legal reactions against housing discrimination. It includes several articles defining direct and indirect discrimination, harassment (which is considered a form of discrimination) and positive action. This Act must be understood as a national and sectorial application of the European Union (EU) anti‐discrimination directives, specifically the Racial Equality Directive (2000/43/EC).

The paper shows how EU anti‐discrimination directives can be transposed into the domain of housing using a national example.

Because Catalan Law is one of the first and most complete national legislations using European techniques to fight against housing discrimination, it could be used as an inspiration for future new national legislations.

In this chapter, we investigate race discrimination and race equality policies in the workplace at two interrelated levels of analysis in Cyprus. At the macro-national level, the effectiveness and implications of the present legal system is evaluated, and the chapter discusses whether it brought about the desirable results of safeguarding a fairer and efficient legal system, eliminating any kind of discrimination at the European Union (EU) level. At the meso-organizational level, the chapter refers to the results of research presenting a number of organizational policies and practices that safeguard or hinder the inclusion of migrants at the workplace.

Spirituality in the workplace is a concept that has been emphasized a lot in recent years. However, the relationship of this concept with gender and discrimination has not been adequately addressed. Individual and organizational positive outcomes of spirituality in the workplace cannot be obtained when discrimination is in question. This is because the concepts of spirituality and discrimination in the workplace are completely opposite to each other. In order to prevent discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation, race, age, religion, disability and to establish spirituality in the workplace, organizations should follow awareness and training programs to eliminate prejudices of their management and employees, give importance to differences, develop an understanding of democracy and justice within the organization and development egalitarian and anti-discrimination policies and application. In this direction, while the differences are managed correctly, spirituality will be established in the workplace.

Public procurement, as well as constituting a means of providing goods and services, also represents a powerful legal instrument available to contracting authorities to ensure compliance with secondary or noncommercial goals. Among these secondary objectives, equality between women and men may be highlighted. The possibility of integrating social concerns into public procurement is envisaged in the Community Directives on public procurement and has also been incorporated in the legal systems of various Member States. This paper studies the inclusion of social clauses on gender equality that appear in the different phases of a procurement procedure in the Spanish Public Procurement Law (Law 30/2007, 30th October, on Public Sector Contracts).

This chapter discusses social responsibility taking into account the role of women as statutory auditors. Indeed, auditors are expected to confirm whether the financial statements are true and fair and, in accordance with the law, adopt a responsible attitude to the society. Methodologically, this research relied on a two-track approach. The first takes the form of an editorial review and argument which allows the authors to explore social responsibility literature along with implications for the role of women as statutory auditors. The second takes the form of a field research based on an exploratory longitudinal analysis, over the period 1973–2013, and support of the legal regime of Portugal, with public available sources of statistics and reports relating to the statutory auditors. The authors provided a glimpse of the role of women in this profession and, in the last years, the results show a weak increase of women on the statutory audit exercise.