ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the background of the Equality Act and its provisions concerning the promotion of equality. It analyses empirical evidence on the promotion of equality in the workplace in compliance with the Equality Act. The idea of equality legislation was opposed by trade unions and employers who anticipated interference in their joint decision-making. Thus, a bourgeois government managed to pass the equality act in 1980 and also a major amendment to it in 1992. The chapter investigates whether statistical data would reveal improvement in women’s position that could be attributable to the Equality Act. Any impact of the promotion of equality by employers is hardly discerned from the statistical data concerning the very issues which were the original justification in the preparatory works for the enactment of the Equality Act: pay, occupational status and opportunities for career advancement.
