Equality and empowerment for decent work

Equality is at the heart of the notion of “decent work”, the ILO’s exciting new vision to promote “opportunities for women and men to obtain decent and productive work, in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity” (ILO, 1999, p. 3). In this context — and with national and local action increasingly moving away from negative duties to avoid discrimination towards positive and inclusive duties to promote equality — this article argues that the best model of regulation is one which involves the empowerment or participation of the disadvantaged groups. To that end it begins by deconstructing the idea of equality and goes on to explore this idea in the context of other fundamental rights, explaining why positive duties to promote equality are needed. Finally, it examines some regulatory models for implementing duties to promote equality and how these can be used as vehicles of empowerment.