Equal Opportunities Work - Theories about Practice

determined decisions cannot be implemented owing to circumstances beyond
our control.
In our capacities as acting beings, we make different life choices, we weight
up different courses of action against one another and decide how we will act.
Or we may throw ourselves headlong and without much reflection into a
course of action. Alternately, forces we neither know of nor believe we possess
may subconsciously guide us.
The freedom to create oneself is, of course, also relative to a given context.
Our environment shapes us, our social circumstances, our societal situation,
but we also shape ourselves. We cannot choose to be absolutely anything at all,
because the context in which we live does not permit a full range of choices.
Neither, however, are we predestined to be a certain way, but we do have a
certain scope of freedom of choice to create and recreate ourselves. The aim is
to be able to affirm different sides of ourselves, and allow these sides to crossfertilize.
So what does all this talk of greater freedom actually mean? One way of
describing greater freedom is simply to say that the individual has more
options. The more choices I have, the freer I am. Equality of opportunity in an
organization may be seen as one way of increasing the number of options
available to those working there. Let us link this to the difference between
thinking about equal opportunities work in existing and in hypothetical future
otganizations. There is a major difference between working to have the
underrepresented sex given greater freedom of choice in an existing structure,
an actual organization, and working to ensure that in a future, not yet existing
organization, both sexes will have more options available to them. This future
organtzation would offer freedom of choice in a way that does not exist today.
Let us now assume that the aim of equal opportunities endeavors is to
increase individual freedom in terms of way of life and self-definition. Seen in
this way, does equal opportunities work become a question of individuality or
an issue of equal importance to both sexes?
Our universities are examples of male-dominated structures, organizations
shaped by men on men's terms. one way of justifying equality of opportunity,
if the aim of equal opportunities work is seen as improving the situation of the
underrepresented sex in an existin g organization, is to say that it will increase
individual freedom, meaning greater freedom of choice for the
underrepresented sex. For instance, giving the underrepresented sex more
career options.
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