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Equality of opportunities

2007 was the year of Equal Opportunities for All in the European Union. EAEA is actively engaged in improving access to learning for all adults.

In Wikipedia "Equal Opportunity" is defined as "a descriptive term for an approach intended to provide a certain social environment in which people are not excluded from the activities of society, such as education, employment, or health care, on the basis of immutable traits.

Equal opportunity practices include measures taken by organizations to ensure fairness in the employment process".
In practice, methods for fulfilling equal opportunity can be less than complete or ineffective. Indeed, the means by which to measure the success or failure of equal opportunity policies is unclear. Opportunity itself is often difficult - if not impossible - to accurately measure.

Thus, in practice, equal opportunity is said to exist when people with similar abilities reach similar results (equality of outcome) after doing a similar amount of work. Indeed, equal opportunity and equality of outcome are often seen as complementary. Other societal traditions interfere with equality of opportunity, however; for example, as long as wealth, and thus opportunities, can be passed from one generation to another through inheritance, it is unclear how equality of outcome would come about for two children of similar ability, one born into the elite class and one born into the middle or lower class (Wikipedia, 13.09.07).

The 2007 European Year of Equal Opportunities for All sought to make people in the European Union more aware of their rights to equal treatment and to a life free of discrimination.

The activities undertaken during the Year intended to remedy the
discrimination from which some individuals suffer because of their
gender, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age, or
sexual orientation. These are grounds for discrimination that may be addressed at European level.

The four core themes of the European Year proposed by the
European Commission were:

Rights - raising awareness of the right to equality and
non-discrimination
Representation - stimulating a debate on ways to increase the participation of under-represented groups in society
Recognition - celebrating and accommodating diversity
Respect and tolerance - promoting a more cohesive society

EAEA promotes equal opportunities regarding the access to adult education. We see excluded groups in many places in Europe, being denied the possibility to develop themselves through education. Thus EAEA supports projects facilitating access to education for disadvantaged groups. On the one hand, there is
the Grundtvig Award, which in 2007 was awarded to a project aimed at improving and increasing learners' equality of opportunities to the benefits and rewards of full active citizenship and critical democracy. On the other hand, there was the conference held in Riga on December 3-4, with the title Equal Opportunities for All - the value of adult learning in promoting equality. Read more about the conference here.

Resources

EAEA and NVL conference material from December 2007

The 2007 European Year of Equal Opportunities for All of the European Union
Sign up for the newsletter about Equal Opportunities of the European Commission
Links to organisations representing and defending people exposed to discrimination(EU-website)
Links to EU-institutions, International Organisations and European level NGOs (EU-website)
Links of the European Network Against Racism (ENAR)
Equal Opportunities Commission (UK) (EOC)
Literature on Equal Opportunities and Adult Education (ERIC - Education Resources Information Center

Others

The European Union supports NGOs and trade unions to participate in anti-discrimination training. Participants will be informed on the European Equality Directives and their transposition into national legislation. Find out when trainings take place in your country here.
You can also read the training manual.

More information can be found on the European Union website.

If you have or find information to be added to this guideline, please
send an email to trainee-hel@eaea.org.

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