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This article is a marginally shortened version of Supplement No. 15 to Women in Europe. The European Community answers a series of 50 questions relating to women and employment.

While the words diversity, disparate impact, and discrimination are commonly read and heard by working adults and professionals, they can at times be confusing and fearful to some managers. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of a specific aspect of US civil rights laws – the disparate impact theory. The authors provide an analysis based on the statute, case law interpreting, and applying the statute, administrative guidelines from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as well as legal and management commentary. The paper illustrates the requirements of a plaintiff employee’s initial case based on the disparate impact theory. The challenging causation component which requires some degree of statistical evidence is given particular attention. Limitations to the paper are stated at the beginning; and recommendations to managers are explored and provided toward the end of the paper.

It is a legal paper which covers all the laws related to discrimination based on disparate impact and disparate treatment theories. Actual court cases up until this month and Americans laws related to this concept are reviewed and critically discussed.

The salient feature of disparate impact is that this legal theory allows a plaintiff job applicant or employee to sustain a case of illegal discrimination without providing any evidence of a discriminatory motive. As opposed to the disparate treatment liability is imposed based on disproportionate adverse results and not discriminatory intent.

This paper deals with the disparate impact theory pursuant to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. However, it must be pointed out that the disparate impact theory is also applicable to claims arising under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Since the focus of this paper is Title VII federal and state constitutional issues, such as the applicability of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection clause that may arise in disparate impact cases involving government entities will not be addressed.

Managers and employees can protect themselves in the workplace from illegal discriminatory practices. Initially, employers and managers must be aware of the distinction between a disparate impact case and a disparate treatment case with the latter requiring evidence of intentional discrimination. Evidence, of course, can be direct or circumstantial or inferential. Whereas in a disparate impact case there is no intentional discrimination; and as such proof of discriminatory intent is not required. Rather, the employee has to present evidence that the employer’s neutral on-its-face employment policy or practice caused an adverse disproportionate impact on the employee as a member of a protected class.

Human resources professionals and managers must become educated in diversity laws in order to provide an inclusive workplace for all employees and candidates. Employers have legitimate areas of concern in hiring and promoting employees; and the courts are cognizant of employer responsibilities; and thus the employers must be able to show how specific knowledge, skills, education, training, backgrounds, as well as height, weight, strength, and dexterity are legitimate qualifications that directly relate to successful job performance.

This is an original paper by the authors.

Informed by a relational theorisation of equal opportunity, this paper seeks to focus on multi‐level experiences and observations of women working in Pakistan's formal employment sector considering issues and challenges facing them at three levels of analysis, i.e. macro‐societal, meso‐organisational and micro‐individual.

Drawing on in‐depth qualitative interviews with 30 working women in Lahore, the paper examines multi‐level issues of women working in Pakistani organisations.

The study reveals that focusing exclusively on organisations and holding them solely accountable for equal opportunity may be inadequate as organisational structures and routines of equal opportunity are affected by both macro‐societal factors (e.g. legal, socio‐cultural) and micro‐individual factors (e.g. intersectionality, agency). In particular, the study highlights unique socio‐cultural and structural challenges facing working women in Pakistan and the ways in which these women are able to negotiate and overcome some of these challenges.

The study is based on six Pakistani organisations located in Lahore, Punjab, and may not be generalized to represent issues and challenges of equal opportunity in other provinces of Pakistan.

The paper suggests that employers may pay special attention to socio‐cultural issues facing women to promote gender equality at the workplace.

The study contributes to the equal employment opportunity literature by exploring gender equality issues in a Muslim majority country's context.

This chapter explores the Slovenian equal opportunities policy in the context of globalization debates. Focusing mainly on the equal opportunities legislation in Slovenia and the other recent European Union (EU) member states, the aim of the chapter is to reflect upon globalization as Europeanization and as supraterritorialization. Supraterritorial processes, such as the second wave of Western feminist movement established a mutual relationship with feminists in the former Yugoslavia during the 1980s. Feminism and the feminist movement in Yugoslavia and in Slovenia in the 1980s and in the beginning of the 1990s, in particular, represent an important basis for gender equality politics and legislation in Slovenia. Another significant element that contributes to the introduction of gender equality legislation is EU integration. In Slovenia and also in other Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries that recently joined the European Union, the accession played a considerable role in adopting gender equality legislation. Europeanization in the context of equal opportunities policy leads to the homogenization process of standards for gender equality in the EU member states. In terms of legislation in member countries, the Europeanization of gender equality policy is performed as top-down politics particularly in recent member states, such as CEE. Using the example of gender equality policy in Slovenia, this chapter analyzes equal opportunities policy as a concept and as a legal mechanism emerging from the Western tradition, which was directly applied to CEE countries, such as Slovenia, when they joined the EU.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

Since the first Volume of this Bibliography there has been an explosion of literature in all the main areas of business. The researcher and librarian have to be able to uncover specific articles devoted to certain topics. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume III, in addition to the annotated list of articles as the two previous volumes, contains further features to help the reader. Each entry within has been indexed according to the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus and thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid information retrieval. Each article has its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. The first Volume of the Bibliography covered seven journals published by MCB University Press. This Volume now indexes 25 journals, indicating the greater depth, coverage and expansion of the subject areas concerned.

A central issue of public policy in relation to employment behaviour, particularly in the United States and Britain since the 1960s, has been the question of how to deal with discrimination against minority groups. The latter may be taken to include women, coloured employees, immigrants, foreign workers, the young and the elderly, but in this paper we concentrate on race and sex discrimination which have tended to receive most attention from both academics and policy‐makers. Further, attention is focused on the USA and Britain, partly because there is more evidence on the workings of equal opportunity legislation in the USA than in any other country, and partly for the reason that developments in Britain appear to mirror those in the USA. Since it is difficult, if not impossible, to isolate the precise extent of discrimination at the macro‐level, on account of variations in personal characteristics and establishment variables, detailed analysis of the operation of local labour markets and individual enterprises and establishments then becomes crucial. Here a feature of recent empirical work has been the emphasis placed on the internal labour market (ILM) and the related concept of the dual labour market (DLM). This is, in fact, highly relevant to equal opportunity legislation not only because it is at the level of the individual organisation or unit of employment that the laws are to be applied but also because, as will be outlined below, the legislation appears to have certain features which are consistent with a dualist interpretation of the operation of the labour market and the emphasis on equality of training and promotion opportunities is most appropriate and significant in the context of a well‐developed internal labour market.

As an on‐going political process, the European Union has had complex effects on the economic and social contract in and between its member countries. Some consequences may not have been expected, and not the least of these has been the way in which the rules developed for the Community have impacted on national sovereign law‐making powers. This was precisely illustrated in a United Kingdom discrimination case about the assessment of compensation. While the national law fixed a compensation limit, the effect of Community law rules was such that this limit had to be ignored by the national courts. Understanding how this result could be achieved is not merely a matter of academic interest. It is important for any business undertaking proposing to establish subsidiaries either in the present Union or in the many Eastern European countries which are lining up to gain membership. More generally, the lessons of the European Union experience can inform debate internationally about securing social rights in trade blocs which have either been recently formed or which are in the process of creation.

Achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls is the fifth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). This continues the effort of the third Millennium Development Goal (MDG), which was “to promote gender equality and empower all women”. In Nigeria, a Gender and Equal Opportunities Bill had been under consideration in the Nigerian Senate since 2010 to be enacted as a Nigerian law as part of effort toward MDG 3. After six years, the Bill was voted out for “lack of merit”. The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical analysis of the outcome.

A review of this Bill and the authors’ perceptions of reasons for the decline are subsequently presented.

There were concerns based on the content of the Bill. It was agreed by members of the Nigerian Senate that the content of the Bill was not in line with the religious and cultural beliefs of most of the Nigerian population and thus, unworthy to be enacted as a Nigerian law.

The review herein provides important analysis of the content of the declined Gender and Equal Opportunities Bill. It reflects the continued patriarchal norms and perception of the superiority of men over women in Nigeria.

The paper provides a bird-view analysis of an unsuccessful Gender and Equal Opportunities Bill in Nigeria. This information is needed for a review of the Bill ahead of possible re-presentation following modifications for discussion.

This paper examines the applicable scope of United States employment discrimination law to “American” employers of U.S. citizens abroad. Through an analysis of the extraterritorial dimension of American anti‐bias, it is demonstrated that over time, it has become accepted that the full‐range of U.S. anti‐bias law applies transnationally. However, just who is considered an “American” firm is an open‐ended question under the Mas Marques test codified in the Civil Rights Act of 1991. The implications of this ambiguity could well lead to potential legal conflicts in the area of employment discrimination for a multitude of firms worldwide who may not consider themselves presently to be bound by United States employment law.