The United Kingdom's public services, which employ more women than men, led the way in equality initiatives from the late 1970s, at a time when personnel management was centralized and terms and conditions were determined prescriptively and in detail Accordingly, equality policies and practices were introduced into a centralized system From the late 1980s, changes have been aimed at giving local managers more discretion on personnel and pay issues and providing working patterns which depart from the full-time, life-time norm when budgetary constraints have tightened. This article looks at the impact of these changes, or so-called flexibilities, on equality and finds that pay flexibility and contractual flexibility have had a detrimental impact. The evidence with respect to structural flexibility and temporal flexibility, however, is less clear-cut. The article concludes that equal opportunities and flexibilities in many, but not necessarily all, respects are not compatible in the United Kingdom's public services.
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