This research focuses on social relationships within a school context and explores how social relationships within that context contribute to the production and reproduction of inequalities. The research draws on Bourdieu's work and examines the key role of schools in reproducing social and cultural inequalities (Bourdieu 1998). The research explores the process of producing and reproducing inequalities from the perspective of the young people. The study uses the lens of social capital to investigate how social relationships in the form of social capital practices operate within the classroom and the wider school context. While acknowledging structural and cultural dimensions highlighted by Bowles and Gintis (1977) and Willis (1981), I seek to explore how the social relationships between young people in a school context contribute to well documented educational inequalities. I argue that Bourdieu's theoretical framework offers the opportunity to explore relationships by placing social capital in relation to other capitals (economic and cultural) and to locate practices of everyday life, thus linking micro-social and macro-social structural factors. The starting position of this research focuses on the micro, i.e., the individual pupils as active agents in relation to social capital within the school context, before locating it within a wider macro context. The research uses a sequential mixed method design collecting data on the participant's social networks and exploring social practices with semi structured interviews. The research highlights how education and schooling produce and reproduce inequalities in and through the two case study sites.

South Africa’s history as a nation is replete with examples of inequality and unfair discrimination. The working arena was no exception to the rule. In fact, it was one of the areas where inequality was most prevalent. Discriminatory legislation was promulgated under the Apartheid regime. These laws enforced differential treatment of employees along racial lines. After 1994, the newly democratic South Africa, through the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act 108 of 1996 (hereinafter referred to as the “Constitution”), regarded all people as equal before the law and entitled to equal benefit and protection under the law. National legislation was subsequently promulgated to give effect to this constitutional objective. The Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998 (hereinafter referred to as the “EEA”), specifically, gave effect to all employees’ constitutional right to equality in the workplace. Under the EEA, unfair discrimination was forbidden. The EEA also required employers to implement measures to eradicate the injustices of the past. Subsequent to the enactment of the EEA, the Courts reiterated two tests to determine whether unfair discrimination had taken place in the workplace. It also tested whether an affirmative action measure could justify such unfair discrimination. These two tests, referred to in Harksen v Lane NO and others (CCT9/97) [1997] ZACC 12 (11) BCLR 1489 (CC) (Hereinafter referred to as the “Harksen test”) and Minister of Finance v Van Heerden 2004 (11) BCLR 1125 (CC) (Hereinafter referred to as the “Van Heerden test”), were unfortunately applied by the Courts in an inconsistent manner. This created confusion about which test found application in specific circumstances. The Constitutional Court then clarified the confusion through the South African Police Service v Solidarity obo Barnard (2014) ZACC 23 (CC) (Hereinafter referred to as the “Barnard” decision”). It is important to note that this study does not seek to evaluate the correctness of the Barnard decision, nor does it consider the cases prior to the Barnard decision. Rather, this study considers the extent to which the Barnard decision informed later cases dealing with unfair discrimination and affirmative action. In the remaining chapters of this treatise the writer will attempt to answer this question as follows: In chapter two, the legislative framework applicable to issues of unfair discrimination and the application of affirmative action is discussed. Chapter three comprises of a detailed analysis of the Barnard decision. In chapters four and five the writer investigates how the Barnard decision informed four recent cases concerning affirmative action and unfair discrimination in the workplace. These discussions enabled the writer to, in the final chapter; conclude that all four cases were indeed informed by the Barnard decision. The Department of Correctional Services case, however, reiterated the Barnard decision to its fullest extent.

L’égalité a investi le champ du droit béninois de la famille depuis plus d’une décennie. Elle a ainsi permis la suppression du pluralisme juridique et judiciaire qui prévalait jusqu’en 2004. Elle a aussi permis la suppression de la polygamie et la fidélité est ainsi devenue une obligation envers un conjoint unique. La discrimination dans l’appréciation et la répression de l’adultère aussi a disparu. La puissance maritale, et son corollaire, l’incapacité de la femme mariée ont aussi été retirées du droit béninois. Les enfants bénéficient désormais d’une protection presque égale de la loi quelques soient leurs sexes et l’origine de leurs filiations.En dépit de cette grande ouverture du droit de la famille à l’égalité, il y demeure d’importants points d’ombre. Il s’agit notamment du nom des époux, de la transmission du nom aux enfants, de l’acquisition et de la transmission de la nationalité, du choix du domicile conjugal et du délai de viduité.En marge de ces inégalités, les mutations sociales et les progrès de la médecine constituent un tremplin pour de nouvelles revendications de l’égalité. Il est possible de prédire, dans un avenir très proche, l’organisation d’un statut du concubinage, des luttes pour le mariage des homosexuels et des transsexuels en vertu du principe d’égalité. De même, le droit à l’avortement et le droit à l’enfant pourraient avoir les mêmes bases. / Equality invested field of Benin family law for over a decade. It has enabled the removal of legal and judicial pluralism that existed until 2004. It also allowed the suppression of polygamy and loyalty has become an obligation to a single joint. Discrimination in the appreciation and punishment of adultery also disappeared. The marital power and its corollary, the inability of married women were also removed from the Beninese law. The children now have an almost equal protection of the law regardless of their gender few and origin of their affiliations.Despite the openness of family law to equality, there remain significant gray areas. These include the name of the spouses, the name of the transmission to children, acquisition and transmission of nationality, the choice of the marital home and the waiting period.Besides these inequalities, social changes and medical advances are a stepping stone for new claims of equality. It is possible to predict, in the very near future, the organization of a status of concubinage, struggles for marriage of homosexuals and transsexuals under the principle of equality. Similarly, the right to abortion and the right to the child might have the same bases.

1 Summary The focus of the thesis are the issues of equal status and equal opportunities for individuals caring for children, i.e., mothers and fathers, as this is an important topic of the current society and working relationships. The reason for that is the gradual transition from the classical family model of the father-breadwinner and the mother-caregiver to a modern dual-breadwinner model, with a significantly more equal position of women in society, in which both parents want to be involved both in the care and upbringing of their children as well as in the working environment. This work compares legal regulations of the Czech Republic and the Nordic countries, namely Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland, whose family policies are described in the introductory chapters. Nordic countries have a rather specific approach in the area of family policy leading to a gender-neutral state where gender plays almost no role. They are focused on creating a fairly equal society with a pro-father approach in the form of a strong involvement of men in childcare and education. The other side of such equality is the emergence of discrimination, described in detail in the third chapter. The support of families and their involvement in working life has given rise to a new discriminatory reason in labour law...

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This study presents an exploration of a group of soccer stakeholders’ perceptions and experiences of gender equity practices at four Western Cape universities in South Africa. It discusses female soccer players’ experiences of gender equity practices at universities and the implications for the structures and practices of equitable soccer organisations. The concept of soccer stakeholders in this study represents both those at leadership level, soccer administrators, and those actively participating in soccer, male and female soccer players in the universities.This study uses a feminist qualitative methodology and semi-structured individual interviews with four soccer stakeholders and 16 senior soccer players, that is, eight females and eight males, for individual interviews. In addition, focus group interviews with women only and mixed gender interviews were conducted per institution. A major finding from the study suggests the dominance of a discourse of equal and same opportunity and treatment, which was disconnected from the understandings of power, and the lack of problematising the treatment of women as ‘add-on’ to the supposedly natural and hierarchical structure of soccer. In addition, gender equity as a superficial practice and ‘favours for women’ discourses suggest the prevailing male bias in which women’s participation in soccer continues to be viewed as secondary and less valuable than men’s. Rationalising discourses for continued male dominance in soccer suggests that gender equality is ‘conditional’ for women’s teams, because the different levels of soccer they are playing at are not considered or valued the same as the men. Other key findings suggest that, firstly, the four universities did not have the gender equity policy in soccer and soccer administrators did not consider the importance of a specific and directed policy in soccer. Secondly, the results on the experiences of gender (in)equity practices in the universities corroborated the lack of support for women’s soccer and women soccer players’ experiences of marginalisation and neglect. The findings suggest that women’s soccer continues to experience inequity practices in soccer, that women’s soccer is devalued and secondary to male soccer, and that men’s soccer and men in soccer continue to be prioritised. Thirdly, the findings suggest that while the government’s sport policy is acknowledged, of concern is the lack of structures to develop soccer at grassroots level to ensure the sustainability of growth for boys’ and girls’ soccer. Furthermore, schools are identified as important institutions, particularly primary schools, to encourage and develop an interest in soccer for boys and girls, because they have paid little attention to the development of soccer for girls in different age groups, or to nurture continuity and motivation in various age groups, as compared to boys. Fourthly, there is a lack of passionate, serious, and committed people to implement and monitor the policy to make sure that the progress of gender equity practices are implemented and monitored in soccer. In addition, there is suspicion at the government’s lack of interrogating the continuing bias of the media in relation to the dominance of men’s soccer and lack of media coverage for women’s soccer. Fifth, the findings suggest that women are not playing a role in supporting their games and they need to take ownership of their soccer, because they seem to have surrendered the role of developing their soccer, and are reliant on men to develop girls’ and women’s soccer. In addition, women who play soccer reportedly experience stigmatisation through name calling and questions about their physical appearance, sexuality, and dress code. Finally, given that soccer fields are contested ‘spaces’ that have been traditionally and ‘naturally’ declared for men, research that prioritises interrogating and problematising men’s perceptions of women’s soccer and issues of gender equity practices in soccer is needed in a democratic South Africa.

Positioning itself within policy debates on the best way to deal with disputes in UK workplaces and the (potential) resultant increased interest in mediation, this thesis draws on literature from law, philosophy, psychology and management to add to the growing, but largely theoretically-underdeveloped research on workplace mediation. In this research, mediation refers to a voluntary and confidential process where parties to dispute seek a mutually agreed outcome. This process is facilitated by an impartial third-party mediator. The research offers an empirically-informed theoretical framework exploring the extent to which the use of mediation to deal with bullying and harassment is appropriate. In asking whether mediation is appropriate, it argues that it is necessary to consider whether its use is not only feasible but also fair. Using Rawls’s (2001) theory of justice as fairness to structure the discussion and focusing on cases involving sex, race and sexual orientation it constructs an argument for the use of fairness as a guiding concern for an understanding of mediation grounded in an appreciation of public values and notions of social cooperation. It explores tensions between the nature of mediation and of bullying and harassment to question the extent to which an emphasis on cost/efficiency and empowerment in mediation rhetoric may obscure questions of the privatisation and individualisation of systemic and structural problems. Within this discussion theoretical and practical questions are identified and are then explored through the use of a mixed method research design comprised of a small-scale questionnaire (N=108), interviews (N=20) and focus groups (Four groups, N=16). Samples were purposively recruited and consisted of those over 18 years old with six month’s work experience in a UK workplace (questionnaire/focus groups) and external workplace mediators (interviews). Answers to the questions are offered in the form of a framework comprised of a theoretical model and a practically-orientated schematic. It is argued that the reconciliation of potential conflicts between mediation and bullying and harassment are found in a greater understanding of the way mediation operates in practice. This understanding is guided by an appreciation that different standards of reasonableness apply to different behaviours and that individuals, organisations and the courts have differing levels of responsibility for setting and upholding these standards. In meeting this responsibility it is important an organisation is seen as a party to the mediation process since a threat to fairness arises not from privatisation per se but from a personalisation of problems of organisational and/or societal significance. Rather than reject the use of mediation in such situations it suggests the notion of ‘tailored privatisation’ offering a compromise between the concerns of privatisation and the purported benefits of mediation.

Gender inequality and women empowerment constitute one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) agreed to, by United Nations in 2000. The South African 2010 country report on MDGs shows an increase in the share that women have in wage employment in the non-agricultural sector. It further states that in the Eastern Cape Province, women accounted for more than half of employees in the non-agricultural sector. This study conducted evaluated gender differences in terms of wage employment in a semi-urban village in the Eastern Cape. Findings show that gender differences in wage employment still exist, in favour of males.

This thesis analyzes LGBTQ equality in the two Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Jamaica. The research answers the question: what key institutional factors can explain the variance in LGBTQ equality in Guadeloupe and Jamaica? I argue that variances in local LGBTQ equality between Guadeloupe and Jamaica can be explained by analyzing the different political, legal and socio-cultural historical institutions in these two islands. The central conclusion contends that historical institutions with a political or legal dimension have created significantly different levels of LGBTQ legal equality in Guadeloupe and Jamaica while socio-cultural historical institutions have helped to establish a similar level of LGBTQ equality in social and cultural realms. This thesis thus makes the case for using a historical institutionalist perspective to examine LGBTQ activism in the Caribbean.

It is commonly contended by the political right that freedom and equality are mutually incompatible values. This ‘incompatibility argument’ can be characterized as positing a trade-off between freedom and equality, such that the more a society realizes of one, the less it is able to realize of the other. Talk of trade-offs between values implies the possibility that they can be subjected to quantitative analysis, and in order to make sense of the trade-off interpretation of the incompatibility argument I identify quantifiable conceptions of freedom and equality. The incompatibility argument invokes negative freedom and equality of outcome. Consequently it is often resisted by endorsement of alternative conceptions of these values like positive freedom or equality of opportunity. Refraining from this strategy, I aim to show that for those committed to both negative freedom and equality of outcome the outlook is not as bleak as the incompatibility argument would seem to suggest. This is because the traditional picture ignores the context in which the trade-off between freedom and equality takes place, namely, the widespread privatization of resources. I argue that in addition to the advertised trade-off between freedom and equality, each of these values also trades off against the extent to which private property rights are enshrined. As above, for trade-offs to take place between private property and other social goals it must be possible to quantify private property, and I seek to show that such quantification can be achieved. If my analysis is successful we will then be faced with three trade-offs: freedom vs. equality, freedom vs. private property, and equality vs. private property. By integrating these three trade-offs into a single three-dimensional model I aim to present a more informative account of the relationships between the three goals. The extent to which freedom and equality trade-off against one another is itself determined in part by the extent to which a society realizes private property. As a result, by curbing or abolishing private property rights more freedom can be secured alongside greater equality.

Dans les situations présentant un élément d’extranéité, le droit international privé a vocation à intervenir afin de découvrir quelle loi sera applicable. En effet, il s’agit d’une discipline spéciale en ce sens que sa fonction consiste, par le biais de règles indirectes, à déterminer le champ d’application dans l’espace des lois en conflit par le biais d’une méthode scientifique consistant à localiser la loi la plus proche de la situation internationale en cause. C’est pourquoi le droit international privé répond, en principe, d’une justice conflictuelle c’est-à-dire qu’il doit garantir aux sujets de droit un traitement de leur situation internationale neutre et objectif. En d’autres termes, la recherche de la loi applicable procède d’une analyse exempte de considérations substantielles dont le résultat conduit indifféremment à la compétence de la lex fori ou de la loi étrangère. Toutefois si, en droit positif, le droit international privé, assure toujours cette fonction, il répond également d’une justice matérielle, et se décline au travers de nombreuses règles lesquelles se fractionnent sous différentes formes, en fonction des catégories de rattachement auxquelles elles se lient, mais également au regard des sources dont elles découlent. Ainsi, la discipline a fait, et fait encore l’objet d’une grande variété au sein de la société internationale depuis sa première systématisation au XVIème siècle sous la plume de d’Argentré. La présente thèse vise alors à démontrer que, malgré l’objectif inhérent auquel répond le droit international privé, à savoir la justice conflictuelle, cette matière ne conduit pas dans sa forme actuelle, à assurer aux sujets de droit privé une justice égalitaire. Cette recherche consiste donc à mettre en évidence les points défectueux de la discipline au travers d’une étude minutieuse tant de sa structure que de son régime dans le but d’évincer les obstacles qui se dressent face à l’égalité de traitement des sujets de droit. Ainsi, cette démonstration permettra de considérer, par le biais d’une approche systémique, quelle règle de droit et quel régime protègent a maxima le principe d’égalité en droit international privé. / Le résumé en anglais n'a pas été communiqué par l'auteur.