Mothers, Equality and Labour Market Opportunities

Using the Equality Act 2010 as a point of departure, this article addresses the theoretical character of legal measures aimed at achieving gender equality for mothers in the labour market. Equality measures are bedevilled by disagreement about the nature of equality and by the need to accommodate gender-related differences that impact in multifaceted ways upon employees and potential employees. A particular difficulty is that those differences are themselves highly contextual and involve intersecting social and other pressures. Consequently, overly simplistic equality legislation may even worsen the problem rather than resolve it. The article argues for two key themes in legislative responses. First, the complexity of difference suggests that our responses should favour equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome-indeed, such a response can even take account of challenges posed by Hakim's controversial preference theory, notwithstanding the problems associated with that theory. Secondly, the intersectionality of the pressures affecting equality demands a varied regime of intersectional regulatory responses, which are not restricted to the workplace.