Academic literature on the topic 'Jobs; Meritocracy; Equal opportunities'

Resumen. Desde la Sociología del Trabajo, la Antropología, la Sociología de Género, la Sociología de la Educación, se viene denunciando los procesos de segregación laboral a los que están sometidas las mujeres: horizontal y vertical. Desde la década de los ochenta del siglo XX, las aulas universitarias españolas están feminizadas. Proporcionalmente, las alumnas son mayoría entre los egresados, pero siguen teniendo más dificultades que sus compañeros para encontrar un trabajo, salir de la precariedad laboral, recibir el mismo salario por el mismo trabajo, tener las mismas oportunidades de promoción, etc. Y nos preguntamos si una institución como la Universidad, formalmente igualitaria, sede de la ciencia, la objetividad, la racionalidad, mantiene mecanismos de cierre y exclusión social que dificultan el acceso de las mujeres a la docencia universitaria, y de las profesoras a la promoción, especialmente la promoción al cuerpo de catedráticos de universidad, produciendo y reproduciendo lo que conocemos como techos de cristal. Se comprueba, a la luz de los datos, que las profesoras universitarias se concentran en determinadas Ramas de Conocimiento (segregación horizontal) y en determinadas categorías docentes (segregación vertical). El acceso y la promoción en la Universidad se asientan en la meritocracia, de ahí, su imagen de objetividad, neutralidad, igualdad de oportunidades. Es difícil entender y hacer entender que la propia cultura universitaria tiene sesgos, códigos de género, que aplican mecanismos de discriminación hacia las docentes. Es importante conocer las situaciones concretas que se viven dentro de las universidades. Y esto es lo que nos hemos propuesto para la Universidad de León (ULE).Adoptando la perspectiva de género y realizando un análisis de datos secundarios, comprobamos la segregación horizontal y vertical a la que están sometidas las docentes. Asimismo, descubrimos la existencia del techo de cristal: la proporción de catedráticas en la ULE es inferior a la media nacional.Palabras clave: género, enseñanza superior, discriminación, igualdad de oportunidades, universidad.Abstract. From the Sociology of Labor, Anthropology, Gender Sociology, and Sociology of Education, the processes of labor segregation to which women are subjected (horizontal and vertical) are being denounced. Since the eighties of the 20th century, Spanish university classrooms have been feminized. Proportionally, female students are the majority of the graduates, but they still have more difficulties than their peers to find a job, get out of job insecurity, receive the same salary for the same job, have the same opportunities for promotion, etc. In addition, we ask ourselves if an institution such as the university, formally egalitarian, seat of science, objectivity, rationality, maintains mechanisms of closure and social exclusion that hinder women’s access to university teaching, and female professors to promotion, especially the promotion to the body of university full professors, producing and reproducing what we know as glass ceilings. In the light of the data, it is verified that female university professors concentrate on certain branches of knowledge (horizontal segregation) and on certain categories of professors (vertical segregation).Access and promotion in the University are based on meritocracy, hence its image of objectivity, neutrality, equal opportunities. It is difficult to understand and make understand that the university culture itself has biases, gender codes, which apply mechanisms of discrimination towards female professors. It is important to know the concrete situations that are lived within the universities. Moreover, this is what we have proposed for the University of León (ULE).By adopting a gender perspective and analyzing secondary data, we verify the horizontal and vertical segregation to which the female professors are subjected. Likewise, we discovered the existence of the glass ceiling: the proportion of female professors in the ULE is lower than the national average.Keywords: gender, higher education, discrimination, equal opportunities, university.

The aim of the article is to reconstruct the theory of meritocracy, according to which each individual has an equal opportunities, regardless of gender, race, and origin, to achieve social and professional success. The author has also attempted to answer the question whether in the current social reality, in which we deal with overeducation and academic diploma inflation, the meritocratic belief about the exclusive influence of individual talents and merits on social and professional success finds its confirmation in social practice. The genesis, essence and directions of criticism of the concept of meritocracy are presented. The article points out that the ideology of meritocracy, despite its egalitarian assumptions, which undoubtedly contributed to the democratization of education, especially at the higher level, confirms social inequalities.

Young people are confronting a world in which they may not achieve economic strides their parents did. Almost all will have been awarded university degree, worth far less (in the terms and conditions of their employment) than that of their parents, if they themselves graduated from university. In the article the author discusses the relationship between higher education and stratification. The concepts of meritocracy and credentialism are considered and a particular attention is paid to an equal/unequal access to education dilemma. Discussed is why a liberal arts education is losing ground and why it is being made a scapegoat for graduate unemployment. Does the nightmare of Weber’s “iron cage of rationalization” come true and is the contemporary university in the service of an economic order with all the related technical requirements of machine production? In the second part of the article the role of meritocratic discourse and educational credential inflation is considered as well as the growth of menial jobs for young people as a case in Poland. Key words: education at post-secondary level, liberal arts, youth unemployment, inequality, Poland.

Based on the study of international experience in the development of the fundamental principles of the International Labor Organization, the specifi cs of its activities, the signifi cance for national states, in particular, Uzbekistan, are revealed. The article focuses in detail on the adopted legal norms aimed at ensuring full employment and improving the standard of living, creating jobs that provide the necessary protection of life and health, the well-being of mothers and children, equal opportunities for men and women to obtain the desired housing, opportunities for education, intellectual development, and career growth.

In the second part of the Social Change Indicator series, we provide information from government survey data on the work opportunities for Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) and non-SC-ST class in the rural India. 1 Our data refers to 18 states which covers more than 95 per cent of the SC or ST population in the country. The generation of employment continues to remain one of the key political economic challenges in India despite the achievements of its high economic growth rates in the past two decades. The problem remains complicated due to the nature of the country’s labour market that is characterised by skill shortages, dominance of low-paid jobs in the informal and unorganised sectors and vulnerable employments. The government has recently set up a task force to address deficiencies in the existing data on employment and plans to outline a National Employment Policy (NEP) for the creation of quality jobs through economic, social and labour policy interventions. The NEP claims that it will also provide a much-needed focus on equal access to employment opportunities for marginalised sections like the SCs and STs by identifying skill shortages, training needs and available employment opportunities. Given social class differences in India, it is sometimes hypothesised that social exclusion and discrimination remain a common phenomenon in the labour market of different states in India.

Abstract This paper introduces envy into the study of affirmative action (AA) policies. Envy is defined as occurring when people have the same income with different abilities or with equal abilities have different incomes because of unequal access to employment opportunities—which occurs both under adverse and compensatory-discrimination. I analyse how envy, when there is discrimination, interacts with incentive for individuals to make productivity-enhancing investment and thereby affects economic efficiency. A policymaker maximizes the expected utility of the population taking into account the trade-off between fairness or equity (no-envy) and efficiency. An exclusive equal opportunity policy (EOP) that forestalls envy would allocate skilled jobs in a manner skewed towards the historically advantaged group. I study the conditions under which AA is fairness-improving in access to ‘good’ jobs and the implications for efficiency in job allocation between ex ante advantaged and disadvantaged groups.

The South African military has adopted an assertive affirmative action campaign to ensure that women are represented across all ranks and branches. This has brought about new tensions in terms of gender integration, related to issues of equal opportunities and meritocracy as well as the accommodation of gender difference and alternative values. The argument is made that the management of gender integration from a gender-neutral perspective cannot bring about gender equality, as it obliges women to conform to and assimilate masculine traits. This affects women’s ability to function as equals, especially where feminine traits are not valued, where militarized masculinities are privileged and where women are othered in ways that contribute to their subordination. Under such conditions, it is exceedingly difficult for women to bring about a more androgynous military culture espoused by gender mainstreaming initiatives and necessary for the type of missions military personnel are engaged in today.

AbstractWomen in South Africa have for decades, experienced discrimination in the workplace because certain positions such as top and senior management posts were predominately given to men. If women were employed, they were mostly offered positions at the lower levels of the organisation, or specific jobs such as secretaries or administrative jobs. To address such discrimination, to ensure gender equality is promoted and women are offered equal employment opportunities, the South African government has since 1994 adopted different anti- discriminatory laws to expedite equal employment to improve the position of women in the workplace. To explore the extent to which the position of women in the workplace has changed - if at all - since the dawn of democracy, this paper provides an analysis of women’s employment standing in 2014 in the South African workforce. The goal of this study is to identify employment gender gaps both in terms of employment numbers, as well as employment in different sectors. To explore this objective, the study first provides an overview of some of the anti - discriminatory laws that were put in place by the South African government to promote equal opportunities for all South Africans, especially women. Second, the study develops a conceptual framework based on an analysis of the literature on gender equality and its link to equal employment for women. Finally, the study provides an overview of the South African labour force as at 2014, showing the gap between male and female employment. The findings confirm that despite South Africa’s progressive legislative and policy measures, women remain underrepresented in the workplace, meaning that progress in redressing unfair discrimination has been slow and/or uneven. The findings also reveal that men continue to dominate the workforce, especially in top and senior management positions.

Abstract Despite the laws and regulations that should ensure equal gender treatment, women are still disadvantaged in all businesses and public sector. This discrimination is manifested particularly in the approach to jobs, financial evaluation, political nominations and opportunities of developing their abilities regardless of gender. The gender differences in work and public life remain even today the most visible evidence of inequality between men and women in our society. The gender equality is one of the fundamental principles of EU law and all its member countries committed to be in the compliance with it. This article reviews the current state of gender equality in EU.

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Brazil, likewise other countries, has been adopting affirmative actions policies to compensate social groups that are marginalized mainly due to a historical discrimination; the goal is to allow them to exert fundamental rights. Since the last decade, the main part of the approved measures had its focus in education, specially concerning the access to high quality public universities. The quota system for the civil service examinations, although already legalized in many cities, only recently gained space in the social discussion and the governmental agenda, after its implementation by the states and the approval of the Statute of Racial Equality, which stands for the application of affirmative actions policies that allows the black people participation in equality of conditions in the economical, social, political and cultural life of the country. Data from the Ministry of Planning, Budget and Management indicate that, although black and brown people represent half of Brazil´s population, they occupy less than 30% of the civil posts at the Executive. In the highest paid careers, the black people presence is even more reduced. Due to this unequal scenario, in July 9th, 2014, the Federal Law nº 12.990 was approved, establishing racial quotas for black people in 20% of the civil posts in federal public administration. The goal of this work is to evaluate the consequences of the quota system approved by this law, which uses only racial basis criteria. This research intends to verify if this legal mechanism is able to decrease the social exclusion in the access to the civil federal work posts and also to contribute for the debate concerning the affirmative actions policies.
O Brasil, a exemplo de outros países, passou a adotar políticas de ação afirmativa com a finalidade de compensar grupos sociais que se encontram em posição desfavorável, usualmente em razão de um passado de discriminação, proporcionando-lhes a fruição de direitos fundamentais. Desde a última década, a maior parte das medidas aprovadas tinha como foco a educação, em especial o acesso às universidades públicas de alta qualidade. Já a reserva de vagas em concursos públicos, embora já vigorasse em diversos municípios, só começou a ganhar espaço no debate social e na agenda governamental recentemente, a partir de sua implementação por parte de estados e da aprovação do Estatuto da Igualdade Racial, que prevê a aplicação de políticas de ação afirmativa como maneira a permitir a participação da população negra em condição de igualdade na vida econômica, social, política e cultural do País. Dados do Ministério do Planejamento, Orçamento e Gestão indicam que, apesar de representarem a metade da população brasileira, negros e pardos ocupam menos de 30% dos cargos do Poder Executivo. Nas carreiras mais bem remuneradas, como as de nível superior, a presença dos negros é ainda mais reduzida. Em resposta a esse cenário de desigualdades, foi sancionada Lei nº 12.990, de 9 de junho de 2014, que reserva aos negros 20% das vagas oferecidas nos concursos públicos no âmbito da administração pública federal. O objetivo deste projeto é avaliar os desdobramentos do sistema de cotas implementado pela referida lei, que utiliza exclusivamente critério de natureza racial. Tenciona-se verificar se tal mecanismo é capaz de tornar menos excludente o acesso ao serviço público federal, de forma a contribuir para o debate a respeito das ações afirmativas.

Este trabalho analisa as garantias de igualdade de oportunidades e de transparência no procedimento concursal de acesso ao funcionalismo público. Para a consecução do objetivo acima referido, foram feitas entrevistas com alguns funcionários, com ampla experiência, nos mais diversos setores que compõem a função pública guineense, para dentre outras coisas, identificar as principais barreiras políticas e jurídicas que impedem a realização de um processo credível e igualitário; entender as politicas adotadas, se é que existem, no processo de recrutamento de recursos humanos e; compreender quais os possíveis impactos que a realização do concurso público poderá ter na administração pública Guineense. Contudo, após as entrevistas e a sistematização das informações obtidas, percebe-se que: o critério de recrutamento e seleção dos funcionários e dirigentes na administração pública guineense, não obedece às leis existentes, consequentemente não promove a meritocracia; maior politização nas nomeações para administração pública; desigualdade de género ((mais homens do que as mulheres na administração e nos cargos da direção... etc.) e falta de transparência no processo de recrutamento. Nesta perspectiva, conclui-se que a Administração Pública guineense é, ainda, uma administração pública com inúmeros problemas. A não realização do concurso público como forma de recrutamento e seleção para a função pública representa clara violação da Constituição, do Estatuto do Pessoal da Administração Pública e dos princípios da administração pública. Tendo presente que o concurso deve ser a forma privilegiada de recrutamento e seleção dos trabalhadores para administração pública, face a importância, para o próprio Estado, de dispor de uma administração forte, este trabalho esta dividido em quatro capítulo: No primeiro capítulo procura-se fazer um enquadramento téorico sobre evolução dos modelos de estado e da administração pública, tantando compreender e análisar o papel dos funcionários e dirigentes públicos e forma como são recrutados e selecionados para o desempenho das funções administrativas. No segundo capítulo faz – se um breve historial sobre a administração pública na Guiné-Bissau, tentando compreender o papel dos recursos humanaos, antes e depois da independância até aos nossos dias, a meneira como são nomeados os dirigentese, recrutado e selecionado os funcionários para administração pública guineense, à luz da Cosntituição e do Estatuto Pessoal dos Dirigentes da Administração Pública; No terceiro capítulo abordamos a metodologia e objetividade de estudo; e no quarto capítulo faz-se análise da entrevista, discussão de resultado e conclusão. De salientar que as entrevistas foram realizadas tendo por base a opinião dos entrevistados, a partir de maio de 2019 à março de 2020.
This paper analyzes the assurance of equal opportunities and transparency in run for access to civil servants. In order to achieve the above-mentioned objective, interviews were conducted with some highly experienced employees from wide range of sectors, which make up Bissau-Guinean public service, among other things, to identify the main political and legal barriers that prevent the realization of a credible and egalitarian process; To understand the adopted policies (If any) in the process of recruiting human resources, and understand the possible impacts that civil service exam may have on Guinean public administration. However, after the interview and analysis of the information obtained, we understand that: the criterion for recruiting and selecting employees and directors in Guinean public administration does not obey existing laws, and consequently does not promote meritocracy; greater politization in appointment to public administration; gender inequality (more men than women in management and management positions, etc.) and lack of transparency in the recruitment process. From this point of view, we conclude that the Guinean Public Administration is still a public administration with numerous problems. The failure to carry out civil service exam as a form of recruitment and selection for the civil service represents a clear violation of the Constitution, the Staff Regulations for Public Administration Personnel and the principles of public administration. Provided that civil service exam should be the privileged form of recruitment and selection of workers for public administration, given its importance for State itself to have strong administration, this work is divided into four chapters: The first chapter seeks to provide a theoretical framework on the evolution of State and public administration models, trying to understand and analyze the role of public officials and top officials, and the way they are recruited and selected to fulfill their administrative duties. In the second chapter, a brief history of public administration in Guinea-Bissau has been made, trying to understand the role of human resources, before and after independence (up to our days), the ways in which public officers are appointed, recruited and selected to public administration, in the light of the Constitution and Staff Regulations for Public Administration Personnel. In the third chapter, we discuss the methodology and objectivity of the study; In the fourth chapter, analysis of the interview, discussion of results and conclusion are made. It should be noted that the interviews were conducted based on the opinion of the interviewees, from May 2019 to March 2020.

Higher unemployment affects many more people than those currently out of work. A society with unemployment remaining high for many years is very different from one providing adequate opportunities for all who want work. The lack of jobs can be a major obstacle to preventing and reducing poverty and exclusion not simply among the unemployed but also among single parents, older people, and those with disabilities. Equal opportunity programs and rehabilitation services also encounter particular difficulties. The level of unemployment has wider implications for the distribution of resources, power, and opportunity across society. But analysis and research into this wider impact remain limited. The reasons lie in part in a general shift away from structural analyses. Yet more and better understanding of the broader impact of unemployment on society may help us to take account of and respond to the experiences of those currently out of work and to the wider repercussions.

This chapter explores the logic that seemed to guide interviewees' responses in the question: “Do Americans think they live in a meritocracy?” It looks at the conclusions we reach about what we have earned or deserve and the standards we use to reach them, arguing that the most common standard for deservedness Americans use is merit more than meritocracy. The chapter also details the interviewees' responses about American ideas of success, and notes that people evaluate success in the context of their parents' jobs and finances, the neighborhoods where they grew up, and the educational opportunities afforded them. The chapter asserts that our ideas about what it means to earn or deserve something are so flexible for two main reasons: the bigness of life and the subjectivity of experience, and the second reason for our flexibility is that in turning our lives into stories and asking whether we have done enough, we find ways to avoid using the standard of societal meritocracy to evaluate ourselves. Ultimately, the chapter notes that the absence of meritocracy does not preclude the possibility of individual deservedness being realized.

A unique experiment in the international cooperation between two universities began in 2006 with the official opening of the Ca’ Foscari-Harvard Summer School. Professors and students from both universities and both in equal numbers established a Venetian tradition of ‘internationalization at home’, sharing courses in the humanities, economics, and environmental sciences, joining a network that now counts more than one thousand students, and has offered jobs and further study opportunities abroad to many Cafoscarini.

This chapter explores working Paulistanos’ access to good jobs and the limits to mobility in the 1920s. By the end of the Old Republic, laborers and liberal professionals comprised São Paulo’s middle class, and a segmented labor market existed with good jobs in commerce, transportation, and the mechanical sector and bad jobs in the textile sector. Interview transcripts and worker profiles show workers valued a high salary, opportunities for training and advancement, and family employment. Established residents and new residents, who were internal migrants, Eastern Europeans, or immigrants from other Southern Cone ports, vied for these good jobs. Despite tightening immigration regulations and increasing cost of living, the city doubled in size. Not everyone had equal access to these positions: a good appearance and the right connections facilitated entry, placing individuals coming directly from the lavoura, who could not afford the city’s overpriced clothing, women, and Afro-Brazilians increasingly at a disadvantage. The search for housing compounded disadvantages, and the working class increasingly built outward, expanding São Paulo’s footprint into the city’s floodplains. The Great Flood of 1929 demonstrated the precariousness of success and limits of opportunity as flood victims sought refuge in the Hospedaria.

There is little shared understanding of the term “digital divide,” but this has not prevented the international community from investing a great deal of effort in projects that aim to reduce the digital divide by reducing disparities in access to information and communication technologies (ICT) (European Commission High Level Group, 1997; International Telecommunication Union [ITU], 1984, 2003; United Nations Economic and Social Commission [UN ECOSOC], 2000). The divergent rate at which ICT diffuses—the digital divide—is a reflection of broader socioeconomic divides, many of which exist within societies. The divide between men and women, rich and poor, young and old, urban and rural, literate and non-literate, also manifests itself in the digital world of media, computers, telecommunications, Internet, and jobs in software production. Information and communication flows carried by ICT are increasingly becoming an integral factor in international, institutional, and political processes. Lack of access to ICT therefore impacts on opportunities for developing countries’ economic growth, wealth distribution, social empowerment, and development. It is the digital divide which largely prevents the equal sharing of knowledge worldwide and leads to “information and knowledge poverty” among certain groups. If only a select number of countries, and within them certain groups, reap the benefits of ICT while others continue to lag behind, the digital divide will continue to grow and the virtuous cycle that ICT can create will not be enjoyed by many (Millward-Oliver, 2005). There is little acknowledgment and even less acceptance that gender constitutes an important influence in the structure of the “digital divide.” At first glance, this failure to admit context may seem strange and out of step with common sense. Why should gender relations, such an important and pivotal element of social structure, that is known to influence differentiated access to financial resources, employment opportunities, education and training, water and sanitation, health care, legal status, and enjoyment of human-rights not affect access to and control of ICT? This article will explore some of the key factors that lead to gender blindness in the digital divide debate and articulate a strategic response

In the decade after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, African Americans made historic gains in accessing employment opportunities in racially integrated workplaces in U.S. business firms and government agencies. In the previous working papers in this series, we have shown that in the 1960s and 1970s, Blacks without college degrees were gaining access to the American middle class by moving into well-paid unionized jobs in capital-intensive mass production industries. At that time, major U.S. companies paid these blue-collar workers middle-class wages, offered stable employment, and provided employees with health and retirement benefits. Of particular importance to Blacks was the opening up to them of unionized semiskilled operative and skilled craft jobs, for which in a number of industries, and particularly those in the automobile and electronic manufacturing sectors, there was strong demand. In addition, by the end of the 1970s, buoyed by affirmative action and the growth of public-service employment, Blacks were experiencing upward mobility through employment in government agencies at local, state, and federal levels as well as in civil-society organizations, largely funded by government, to operate social and community development programs aimed at urban areas where Blacks lived. By the end of the 1970s, there was an emergent blue-collar Black middle class in the United States. Most of these workers had no more than high-school educations but had sufficient earnings and benefits to provide their families with economic security, including realistic expectations that their children would have the opportunity to move up the economic ladder to join the ranks of the college-educated white-collar middle class. That is what had happened for whites in the post-World War II decades, and given the momentum provided by the dominant position of the United States in global manufacturing and the nation’s equal employment opportunity legislation, there was every reason to believe that Blacks would experience intergenerational upward mobility along a similar education-and-employment career path. That did not happen. Overall, the 1980s and 1990s were decades of economic growth in the United States. For the emerging blue-collar Black middle class, however, the experience was of job loss, economic insecurity, and downward mobility. As the twentieth century ended and the twenty-first century began, moreover, it became apparent that this downward spiral was not confined to Blacks. Whites with only high-school educations also saw their blue-collar employment opportunities disappear, accompanied by lower wages, fewer benefits, and less security for those who continued to find employment in these jobs. The distress experienced by white Americans with the decline of the blue-collar middle class follows the downward trajectory that has adversely affected the socioeconomic positions of the much more vulnerable blue-collar Black middle class from the early 1980s. In this paper, we document when, how, and why the unmaking of the blue-collar Black middle class occurred and intergenerational upward mobility of Blacks to the college-educated middle class was stifled. We focus on blue-collar layoffs and manufacturing-plant closings in an important sector for Black employment, the automobile industry from the early 1980s. We then document the adverse impact on Blacks that has occurred in government-sector employment in a financialized economy in which the dominant ideology is that concentration of income among the richest households promotes productive investment, with government spending only impeding that objective. Reduction of taxes primarily on the wealthy and the corporate sector, the ascendancy of political and economic beliefs that celebrate the efficiency and dynamism of “free market” business enterprise, and the denigration of the idea that government can solve social problems all combined to shrink government budgets, diminish regulatory enforcement, and scuttle initiatives that previously provided greater opportunity for African Americans in the government and civil-society sectors.