The Pros And Cons Of Making Equal Employment Opportunity
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), U.S. agency created in 1964 to end discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in employment and to promote programs to make equal employment opportunity a reality. It has since become responsible for ending discrimination based on age or disability. The commission receives charges of discrimination, investigates, and if they appear true, attempts to remedy them through conciliation. If conciliation is not secured, the commission may bring suit in federal court.
During the Reagan and Bush administrations (1981–93) it was criticized for shifting from blanket to individual complaints, for permitting no retroactive application of the Civil Rights Law of 1991, and for
letting thousands of age discrimination cases lapse. In 1996 it began the mediation-based alternative dispute resolution program to help it resolve charges faster. The commision handles 75,000 to 80,000 charges annually.
Equal opportunity means treating similarly situated people similarly, while taking account of human, cultural, and other differences. It means, for example, that a person’s race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation should be irrelevant to his or her ability to receive quality health care or to own a home.
All people are created equal in rights, dignity, and the potential to achieve great things. True opportunity requires that we all have equal access to the benefits, burdens and responsibilities of our society regardless of race, gender, class, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or other aspects of what we look like or where we come from.Virtually every human rights document contains a similar guarantee of equal treatment. And the conventions on the elimination of racial discrimination and discrimination against women make concrete the affirmative obligations of all nations to provide equal opportunity. “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”
During the Reagan and Bush administrations (1981–93) it was criticized for shifting from blanket to individual complaints, for permitting no retroactive application of the Civil Rights Law of 1991, and for
letting thousands of age discrimination cases lapse. In 1996 it began the mediation-based alternative dispute resolution program to help it resolve charges faster. The commision handles 75,000 to 80,000 charges annually.
Equal opportunity means treating similarly situated people similarly, while taking account of human, cultural, and other differences. It means, for example, that a person’s race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation should be irrelevant to his or her ability to receive quality health care or to own a home.
All people are created equal in rights, dignity, and the potential to achieve great things. True opportunity requires that we all have equal access to the benefits, burdens and responsibilities of our society regardless of race, gender, class, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or other aspects of what we look like or where we come from.Virtually every human rights document contains a similar guarantee of equal treatment. And the conventions on the elimination of racial discrimination and discrimination against women make concrete the affirmative obligations of all nations to provide equal opportunity. “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”