Women’s political equality: theoretical approaches to affirmative action

Understanding affirmative action.

Affirmative action is a controversial and often poorly understood policy. It is also a policy that has been widely studied by social scientists. In this review, we outline how affirmative action operates in employment and education settings and consider the major points of controversy. In addition, we detail the contributions of psychologists and other social scientists in helping to demonstrat...

Color-Blind Affirmative Action

This paper presents a conceptual framework for understanding the consequences of the widespread adoption of “race-neutral alternatives” to conventional racial affirmative action policies in college admissions. A simple model of applicant competition with endogenous effort is utilized to show that, in comparison to color-conscious affirmative action, these color-blind alternatives can significan...

Affirmative action, Cuban style.

Discrimination and Affirmative Action

The word discrimination is used loosely to encapsulate negative ideas surrounding the practice. In the case of affirmative action admissions policies at the University of Michigan, discrimination is used to justify an unjust practice. Generally, when affirmative action is debated, it is considered from a singular perspective (i.e., it is wrong or it is right). Most ignore that admissions polici...

From affirmative action to affirming diversity.

Affirmative action is based on a set of 30-year-old premises that badly need revising. White males are no longer dominant at every level of the corporation (statistically, they are merely the largest of many minorities), while decades of attack have noticeably weakened racial and gender prejudices. At the intake level, affirmative action quite effectively sets the stage for a workplace that is ...