Luxembourg introduced a parental leave scheme in 1999 as a policy effort to stimulate equality between men and women with regard to bringing up children and to allow for reconciliation of family and professional life, so that the caring parents do not have to withdraw from the labour market after having a child. The analysis presented in this paper is one of the first systematic attempts to assess the parental leave take up of women in Luxembourg and to analyze it in light of micro-level characteristics of potential beneficiaries. The paper aims to explore the acceptance of parental leave provisions by the population of young women residing in Luxembourg and to examine which of their socio-demographic and labour market characteristics determine hypothetical parental leave take up. Attention is also paid to anticipated labour market strategies of women after parental leave.

As from the beginning of the 1990s, almost all European countries have introduced wide-reaching social changes, among others in eligibility, entitlement, benefits structures and in the sources of financing. In this article, we propose that a consequence of those reforms may have been a repositioning of some countries in the welfare clusters. To test this hypothesis, we apply the two bi-dimensional classifications of Bonoli (1997) and Kautto (2002) to ten countries as representative of different welfare regimes. Our results reveal an interesting repositioning of some countries, especially Portugal, the UK and Sweden that represents evidence of welfare state reforms.

As in other countries, improving collaboration between health and social care services is a long-established objective of English social policy. A more recent priority has been the personalisation of social care for adults and older people through the introduction of individualised funding arrangements. Individual budgets (IBs) were piloted in 13 English local authorities from 2005 to 2007, but they explicitly excluded NHS resources and services. This article draws on interviews with lead officers responsible for implementing IBs. It shows how the contexts of local collaboration created problems for the implementation of the personalisation pilots, jeopardised inter-sectoral relationships and threatened some of the collaborative arrangements that had developed over the previous decade. Personal budgets for some health services have subsequently also been piloted. These will need to build upon the experiences of the social care IB pilots, so that policy objectives of personalisation do not undermine previous collaborative achievements.

Measurements of income at the household level have traditionally only recorded income received by household members. This has generally been reflected in qualitative research. However, using interview data from two studies of British mothers and children on low incomes, we find that for some, cash and in-kind transfers from family and friends outside the household form a significant proportion of household income. In some cases, income is doubled once gifts are included. Thus, gifts make a substantial contribution to living standards, both quantitatively and qualitatively. The implications of this finding for income measurement are discussed, and further research is recommended.

Consideration of welfare regimes in Hong Kong has generally neglected gender and care work issues, focusing instead on welfare ideologies relating to production and the market orientation of social policies. In addition, traditional Chinese values place a high priority on motherhood. Drawing on qualitative interviews with lone mothers and social workers, this article considers welfare reform in Hong Kong from the late 1990s and the shift to welfare to work, examining these from the perspectives of gender. It suggests that as a result of the reforms there is a danger that lone mothers become double failures, as carers and workers.

The first ten years of the twenty-first century has seen the British Government introduce radical change to its equality policy. These changes have included the creation of a single equalities body, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC); the expansion of the equality terrain to include age, sexuality and sexual orientation and faith and belief in addition to gender, race and disability as protected grounds; the decision to coalesce human rights and equality legislation under the direction the EHRC; the development of an Equalities Framework; the promulgation of a new Equality Act (2009) with the aim of creating a single legal framework to cover all equality legislation together with the development of specific Equality Duties for the public sector around the areas of gender, race and disability with the aim of ‘mainstreaming’ equality. Barbara Roche, the then Minister responsible for equality co-ordination across the UK Government described these changes as ‘the most significant review of equality in over a quarter of a century’.

In the UK and many other European countries, there continue to be concerns about a range of social issues including the position of immigrants, the educational attainment of marginalised groups and the persistence of the gender pay gap. Increasingly, governments and NGOs assert that the promotion of equality and human rights policies are central to addressing these issues, with a view to creating societies which are both more equitable and more efficient. Over the past decade and a half, a period of economic growth followed recently by a major recession, the equality and human rights agenda enjoyed a high political profile. However, as we discuss in this review article, the social and economic optimism of the late nineties and early to mid noughties has been followed by economic retrenchment, a commitment to the shrinking of the state and the public sphere across Europe and a general move to the political right. In this article, we first review the political context which led to the rise of the equality and human rights agenda. Subsequently, we examine competing conceptualisations of equality and their operationalisation within British social policy. Finally, we assess the progress which has been made towards achieving a more equal society in the UK over recent years drawing on data gathered and analysed by the National Equality Panel (NEP, 2010).

This article argues that it is possible to develop key indicators to assess the broad agenda of ‘fairness’, even in the context of competing frameworks (e.g. equality, capabilities), multiple equality strands (gender, race/ethnicity, disability, age, religion/belief, sexual orientation, gender identity and social class) and several domains (e.g. health, education). Indicators are required to summarise complex statistical information to make it accessible to a wide audience. Methods for selecting indicators are discussed: identifying overlaps in frameworks, finding commonalities and applying quality criteria. Synthesising in this way enables identification of ‘key indicators’ of equality, including: intimate partner violence, risk of poverty and pay gaps.

The creation of a ‘regional’ legislature for Wales in 1999 presents the opportunity to evaluate the promotion of equality and human rights in the context of multi-level governance in the UK. A decade on, positive aspects include the political reprioritisation of equalities in policy and law and new forms of representative and discursive politics. However, significant shortcomings are also evident. Overall, the Wales case study suggests that sub-unitary-state legislatures have the potential to tailor equalities policies to meet local needs more effectively, yet progress may be arrested by context-specific factors, as well as those that resonate with the international literature on mainstreaming equalities in the work of government.

This paper focuses on the implications of adopting social audit approaches in order to implement equality policies in Scotland, exploring the tension between surface compliance and deep institutional engagement. Drawing on data from an evaluation of pubic sector bodies’ disability equality schemes, the paper provides examples of different levels of engagement, ranging from surface compliance (some education authorities) to institutional permeation of an equalities ethos (the Scottish Arts Council). The paper concludes by considering the future potential of single equality schemes to promote equality across Scottish society. It is argued that unless there is stronger support and challenge from Scottish government, there is a danger that equality schemes may become paper exercises rather than opportunities for institutional reflection and planning. At the same time, it would be a mistake to dismiss equality planning as merely an exercise in managerialism, since measuring the extent of inequality over time is an essential first step in the long process of achieving institutional change.

Implemented as part of the 2005 amendments to the Disability Equality Act, the Disability Equality Duty (DED) placed new and important demands on public sector bodies. All such organisations are required to develop policies and working practices which actively promote the equality of disabled people as employees, consumers or visitors. The promotion of equality has to be proactive as opposed to reactive and must be mainstreamed into the normal day-to-day activities of organisational working practices. Whilst the DED follows on from the framework of previous anti-discrimination legislation set in place over the last 15 years, it represents a significant change in equality legislation and demands that public sector bodies instigate fundamental changes in their approach towards disability. This article reports on the initial stages of the implementation process of the DED across a range of public sector organisations in England, focussing in particular on how this policy has impacted on mainstreaming. Discussion shows that although organisations show awareness of mainstreaming and its implications for disability equality, there is limited evidence to suggest that the public sector has fully embraced this agenda.

For over a century, the goal of reducing class inequalities in educational attainment has been based at least in part on the belief that this would help to equalise life chances. Drawing upon the main findings of three ESRC-funded projects, this paper reviews the empirical evidence on trends in social class inequalities in educational attainment and the role of education in promoting social mobility in Scotland. The findings show that in the second half of the twentieth century, despite the increase in overall levels of attainment, class differences in educational attainment persisted. Educational policies in Scotland supported educational expansion which allowed larger numbers of working-class children to climb the social class ladder than in the past. However, these did not translate into any break with the patterns of social inequalities in the chances of entering the top-level occupations. The conclusions highlight that educational policies on their own are not powerful enough to change patterns of social mobility which are mainly driven by labour market and social class structures.