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We say tha equal opportunity is legal requirement while Diversity is voluntarily.
According to my thinking, Equal opportunity is controllable to organisation that they can give chances to everyone or not. While, diversity is uncontrollable to an organisation. Organisation can not force an desired groups to join organisation and if it does so it will break rules for equal opportunity. Like if we want people from different region of world so we will have to select one person from each region which will discourage equal opportunity as my countrymen will say that we are not asked.My question is why diversity is legally allowed and good for business if it is discouraging of equal opportunity.
Diversity is not really a legal concept: it is the idea that a broad range of people from various backgrounds will be good for an organisation because it widens the pool of talent etc.
In the UK positive discrimination is illegal. The organisation should not give a job to a less-well qualified candidate instead of the best qualified candidate simply because they have a protected characteristic eg their sex, age, religion, sexual orientation etc.
However, positive action is allowed as a mechanism to try to achieve better diversity. For example, if an employer sees that there are disproportionately few female staff at senior management level then all female employees could be offered a programme of training to help them to develop management skills.
However, when it comes to promoting to senior management the best candidate would have to be chosen irrespective of sex.
Professor as you mentioned in your example that in positive action, organisation can offer trainings to all females so wouldn’t it be violation of equal opportunity as man are not given opportunity. If they both are given equal opportunity and then woman are dominant to man so then they can be promoted as senior management. It is kind of deliberate favour to woman for diversifying the organisation.
So why is that legal?It’s legal because it’s legal. In the UK the law makes a distinction between positive discrimination and positive action. If it weren’t then it could be difficult to become diversified.
For example, if historically most employees of a particular type were male (perhaps engineering or IT), perhaps because of culture, then to employ more female engineers you have to encourage more to apply. Positive action could be ensuring that more job ads were prominent where they were likely to be seen by potential female candidates.
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