Age-based rationing remains highly controversial. This question has been paramount during the Covid-19 pandemic. Analyzing the practices, proposals, and guidelines applied or put forward during the current pandemic, three kinds of age-based rationing are identified: an age-based cut-off, age as a tiebreaker, and indirect age rationing, where age matters to the extent that it affects prognosis. Where age is allowed to play a role in terms of who gets treated, it is justified either because this is believed to maximize benefits (...) from scarce resources or because it is believed to be in accordance with the value of fairness understood as (a) fair innings, where less priority is given to those who have lived a full life or (b) an egalitarian concern for the worse off. By critically assessing prominent frameworks and practices for pandemic rationing, this article considers the balance the three kinds of age-based rationing strike between maximizing benefits and fairness. It evaluates whether elements in the proposals are, in fact, contrary to the justifications of these measures. Such shortcomings are highlighted, and it is proposed to adjust prominent proposals to care for the worse off more appropriately and better consider whether the acquired benefits befalls the young or the old. (shrink)

This paper aims to disclose an expression of age and workplace discrimination in the Lithuanian labor market. The paper is discussing theoretical aspects of age discrimination and presents the results of the sociological survey research results carried out in 2014. The purpose of this paper is to disclose age and workplace discrimination at the Lithuanian labor market. Analysis of scientific literature and quantitative research results allows to state that older adults are experiencing discrimination because of, among (...) others, their age, gender, and stereotypes. Research results revealed that age and workplace discrimination is increasing with the age of the respondents, e.g., the expression in older age groups is more intensive. For the age group of 40-50, age discrimination is lower than the full sample average. Age discrimination is exposing for the age group of 56-60 and is the most intensive for persons 60 years old and older. The research results revealed that older employees have obstacles for career and future perspectives; older people are more often facing discriminative behavior, lacking social justice, insufficient personal respect labor relations, and are more often experiencing pressure to leave the job or facing unreasonable dismissal. (shrink)

This volume-"Selected Contemporary Challenges of Aging Policy"-is the most international of all published monographs from the series "Czech-Polish-Slovak Studies in Andragogy and Social Gerontology." Among the scholars trying to grasp the nuances and trends of social policy, there are diverse perspectives, resulting not only from the extensive knowledge of the authors on the systematic approach to the issue of supporting older people but also from the grounds of the represented social gerontology schools. In the texts of Volume VII interesting are (...) both distinct and coherent elements presenting the role of local, regional and global policies in the prism of the countries from which the authors originate: the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, Italy, Turkey, and the United States. The chapters show a wealth of methodological approaches to the perception of social policy and its tools. In the texts there are issues related to the idea of active ageing, discrimination against older people in the workplace, comparability of solutions friendly to employment of older adults in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia as well as focused on the importance of educational forms determining an active life in old age. This monograph also attempted to answer the question regarding how to transfer the idea of intergenerational learning into the realm of practice. This issue complements the chapter on the implementation of intergenerational programs in institutions providing long-term care support. The book also outlines a public policy on ageing in the perspective of the changes over the last few decades and the case demonstrating solutions to accelerate self-reliance as a key to active ageing. We hope that seventh volume of our series will be an intellectual stimulus for further international research on change in social policy and will contribute to the dissemination of best practices as well as contribute to positive social change. (shrink)

Lippert-Rasmussen and Petersen discuss my ‘Moral case for legal age change’ in their article ‘Age change, official age and fairness in health’. They argue that in important healthcare settings (such as distributing vital organs for dying patients), the state should treat people on the basis of their chronological age because chronological age is a better proxy for what matters from the point of view of justice than adjusted official age. While adjusted legal age should not be used in deciding who (...) gets scarce vital organs, I remind the readers that using chronological age as a proxy is problematic as well. Using age as a proxy could give wrong results and it is better, if possible, for states to use the vital information directly than use age as a proxy. (shrink)

Should a person who feels his legal age does not correspond with his experienced age be allowed to change his legal age? In this paper, I argue that in some cases people should be allowed to change their legal age. Such cases would be when: 1) the person genuinely feels his age differs significantly from his chronological age and 2) the person’s biological age is recognized to be significantly different from his chronological age and 3) age change would likely prevent, (...) stop or reduce ageism, discrimination due to age, he would otherwise face. I also consider some objections against the view that people should be allowed to change their legal age and find them lacking. (shrink)

We provide to readers the 11th volume of the "Czech-Polish-Slovak Studies in Andragogy and Social Gerontology" series. We are delighted to announce that the presented study is the result of the work of scientists from seven countries: Austria, China, Ghana, Hungary, Japan, Poland, and Russia. This international collection of texts is part of the global discourse on the determinants of adult education and the functioning of people in late adulthood. The 11th volume is a collection of research results that show (...) both the positive and negative dimensions of ageing through the prism of research experience from various geographical and cultural areas. The researchers invited to the presented volume tried to illustrate the issues assigned to the following topics: ageing with dignity; retirement age; assumptions and conditions resulting from living in the home; the relationship between challenges concerning life expectancy and needs; care and ageing services; and foundations and potential changes in pension systems. The research results presented in this volume have a common denominator, which is caring for the quality of life of the older people regardless of their place of residence. Thus, the study "Between Successful and Unsuccessful Ageing: Selected Aspects and Contexts" brings new insights from scientists who scrupulously characterize the complexity of processes that affect the positive and negative conditions of functioning in old age, which is a mosaic of various nuances. Inviting readers to familiarize themselves with the content of the monograph, we would like to thank the reviewers who contributed to the improvement of the quality of the texts and open new fields for participation in further joint publishing projects. (shrink)

In ‘Moral case for legal age change’, I argue that sometimes people should be allowed to change their age. I refute six immediate objections against the view that age change is permissible. I argue that the objections cannot show that legal age change should always be prohibited. In this paper, I consider some further objections against legal age change raised by Iain Brassington, Toni Saad and William Simkulet. I argue that the objections fail to show that age change should never (...) be allowed. (shrink)

I Alderdommen (1970) fremsetter Simone de Beauvoir en filosofisk analyse av alderdom og eldre menneskers situa- sjon, og hevder at behandlingen de får er «skandaløs»; samfunnet «returnerer dem som en vare det ikke lenger er bruk for». Hun tilkjennegir et like stort engasjement mot den urett som eldre utsettes for som hun gjør i Det annet kjønn (1949) når det gjelder undertrykkelsen av kvinner. Likevel påstår Beauvoir at alderdommen først og fremst er et problem for mannen, og det har blitt (...) hevdet at Alderdommen er et verk om aldersdiskriminering hvor mannens aldringsprosess gjøres til norm – ikke et feministisk verk på linje med Det annet kjønn. I denne artikkelen argumen- terer Tove Pettersen for at det nettopp er den feministiske filosofien Beauvoir utvikler i Det annet kjønn som ligger til grunn for hennes undersøkelser av undertrykkelse og diskriminering av eldre. I tillegg demonstrerer Beauvoirs omfattende analyse av alderdommen at hverken alder eller kjønn kan studeres uavhengig av hverandre. Alder og kjønn virker sammen, og må ses i lys av den situasjon disse fenomenene fremtrer i hvor også klasse er av stor betydning. Alderdommen kan derfor leses som et verk hvor Beauvoir viser hvordan ulike former for undertrykkelse virker sammen og bidrar til marginalisering og diskriminering av eldre. Nøkkelord: Simone de Beauvoir, Alderdommen, Det annet kjønn, feministisk filosofi, Den andre, aldersdiskriminering, alderisme******* -/- In The Coming of Age (1970), Simone de Beauvoir presents a philosophical analysis of old age and the elderly’s situa- tion, and claims that the treatment they receive is “scandalous”; society ‘returns them as a commodity that is no longer needed.’ She exhibits the same level of commitment regarding the injustice to which the elderly are exposed as she does in The Second Sex (1949) when it comes to the oppression of women. Nevertheless, Beauvoir claims that old age first and foremost is a problem for men, and it has been argued that The Coming of Age is a work on age discrim- ination where the male aging process is made the norm – not a feminist work on par with The Second Sex. In thisarticle, Tove Pettersen argues that it is precisely the feminist philosophy that Beauvoir develops in The Second Sex that enables her to analyze the oppression and discrimination of the elderly. Additionally, Beauvoir's comprehensive analysis of old age demonstrates that neither age nor gender can be studied independently. Age and gender intersect, and must be be seen in light of the situation in which class is of great importance. Thus, The Coming of Age can be read as a work in which Beauvoir shows how different forms of oppression work together and contribute to the mar- ginalization and discrimination of the elderly. Keywords: Simone de Beauvoir, The Coming of Age, The Second Sex, Feminist Philosophy, The Other, Age Discrimination, Ageism. (shrink)

This paper explains alternative views about the nature and value of childhood, and how particular conceptions of childhood matter to a practical issue relevant to the topic of the book: children's voting rights. I don't defend any particular view on this matter; rather, I explain how recent accounts of what is uniquely good or bad about being a child bear on arguments for and against enfranchising children. I also explain why children who live in a society in which many adults (...) fail to comply with their duties of intergenerational justice have a weightier interest in voting, and hence why the case for children's enfranchisement is stronger in such cases. (shrink)

This chapter presents four arguments supporting an age-differentiated tax on bequests, that is, a tax rate on bequests that is varying with the age of the deceased. Whereas those arguments are based on various ethical foundations, and lead to an inheritance tax that can be either increasing or decreasing with the age of the deceased, our comparative analysis leads us to regard one of these arguments as more convincing than the three others: the argument supporting a bequest tax increasing with (...) the age of the deceased, on the grounds of the compensation of unlucky prematurely dead persons in a world of imperfect information. (shrink)

Proces starzenia się społeczeństw stanowi istotne wyzwanie dla krajów Unii Europejskiej. W napływie emigrantów z młodszych regionów świata - głównie Azji i Afryki - dostrzega się sposobu na uzupełnienie malejących zasobów pracy, co prowadzi do wzrostu obaw w zakresie możliwości ich integracji w wymiarze międzypokoleniowym ze społecznościami przyjmującymi. Jednocześnie upatruje się korzyści z migracji seniorów oraz możliwości kształtowania gospodarek regionalnych i lokalnych tak by sprzyjały zaspokajaniu ich potrzeb. Celem opracowania jest przybliżenie koncepcji ageizmu (dyskryminacji ze względu na wiek) w formie (...) zwielokrotnionej, zarządzania różnorodnością, polityki kreatywności oraz związków wielokulturowości z konstruowaniem srebrnych gospodarek. Podsumowanie zawiera potencjalne kierunki dalszych badań nad wielokulturowymi aspektami srebrnej gospodarki. ** Process of ageing is important challenge for European Union countries. Influx of immigrants from younger regions of the world - mainly in Asia and Africa - is considered to be a way of supplementing dwindling labour resources, which leads to an increase in concern for their possible inclusion in the intergenerational dimension of the host communities. At the same time sees the benefits of migration and seniors opportunities to develop regional economies and encourage local authorities in order to meet their needs. Aim of this paper is to present concepts of multiple age discrimination, diversity management, creativity policy and relationships of multicultural society with construction of silver economies. Summary contains potential directions for further research on multicultural aspects of silver economy. (shrink)

[This piece is written for those working in social gerontology and aging studies, with the aim of bringing insights from disability studies and philosophy of disability to bear on enduring debates in those fields.] The guiding question of humanistic age-studies—What does it mean to grow old?—cannot be answered without reflecting on disability. This is not simply because growing old invariably means becoming impaired in various ways, but also because the discriminations and stigmas involved in ageism are often rooted in ableism. (...) We here draw on research in the philosophy of disability as well as the interdisciplinary field of disability studies to explore the relationship between ageism and ableism. (shrink)

Attitudes towards elder people in society depend on the pace of its technological and economical development. Fast changes not only encourage discrimination on the ground of age but also blur the perception of both individual and collective benefits from the extension of life length. This article emphasizes the necessity of finding new ideas of elders’ active social participation. Furthermore it points out the conceptions of creating city areas that favor development and integration of all age groups. It underlines the (...) significance of older generations in process of sustaining cultural continuity in information and knowledge societies by contrasting those ideas with the wisdom society project. ** Ocena obecności ludzi starych w społeczeństwie zależy od tempa rozwoju technologicznego i gospodarczego. Szybkie zmiany sprzyjaj¸a} dyskryminacji ze wzglȩdu na wiek oraz przyczyniaj¸a} siȩ do niedostrzegania jednostkowych i zbiorowych korzyści płyn¸a}cych ze wzrostu długości życia ludzkiego. Artykuł zwraca uwagȩ na niezbȩdność poszukiwania pomysłów aktywnego uczestnictwa seniorów w życiu społecznym, jak też przybliża koncepcjȩ kreowania przestrzeni miejskich sprzyjaj¸a}cych rozwojowi i integracji wszystkich grup wiekowych. Praca podkreśla znaczenie starszego pokolenia w procesie utrzymania ci¸agłości kulturowej w społeczeństwach informacyjnych i społeczeństwach wiedzy poprzez przeciwstawienie tych idei projektowi społeczeństwa m¸adrości. (shrink)

Serious games are an effective method of reproducing aspects of the complex interplay between environments and stakeholders in business situations. In the game we describe here, The Sustainable Port, players experience what it is like to make decisions in such a complex environment. Their aim in the game is to grow the Port of Rotterdam while keeping economic growth in balance with sustainability goals. In this study, we assessed whether experienced Port of Rotterdam employees (PoR employees) show different psychophysiological patterns, (...) and more specifically EAR-derived features, compared to students. We did this on the assumption that physiological patterns will tell us something about how people who are familiar with the environment of the Port of Rotterdam, more specifically Port of Rotterdam employees, make decisions compared to those lacking such familiarity.Our sample consisted of 28 PoR employees and 65 students, all of whom played The Sustainable Port game and had their faces recorded with a camera. The Eye Aspect Ratio was extracted from these recordings and then from those we extracted EAR-derived features. Our results show that Port of Rotterdam employees perform better than students and that the two groups are characterized by different physiological variations in their EAR-derived features. A logistic regression model used to identify PoR employees and students obtained an F1 score of 0.62, a PR AUC score of 0.64, and a ROC AUC score of 0.70. performing significantly above baseline suggesting the effectiveness of using EAR-derived features for this task. Our interpretation was further confirmed by a pseudo-R2 score used to evaluate the goodness of fit of a logistic regression model on the entire dataset. We found that Port of Rotterdam employees had a lower variation in blink rate per minute (blinks/m) and higher variation in the root mean square difference of successive difference in blinks (RMSSD), the consecutive difference between two continuous blinks. Moreover, this study shows that our methods were robust enough to negate the effects of confounders, such as biological sex and age that affect some other studies that analyze blinks. (shrink)

Previous research has extensively analysed teachers' and students' Facebook use for instructional engagement, writing, research dissemination and e-learning. However, Facebook as a data collection mechanism for research has scarcely been the subject of previous studies. The current study addressed these gaps by analysing students' awareness, willingness, and utilisation of Facebook for research data collection [RDC]. This study aimed to predict students’ Facebook use for research data collection based on their awareness and willingness and to determine age and gender differences in (...) such predictions. A sample of 11,562 students of tertiary institutions participated in an online survey. The researchers designed and validated the online survey. Exploratory Factor Analysis was used for dimensionality. Average Variance Extracted [AVE] was used for convergent validity, whilst the Fornel-Larcker criterion and Heterotrait-Monotrait ratio were used for discriminant validity. Composite reliability indices of .97, .94 and .90 proved the instrument’s three sub-scales usable. One sample t-test and multigroup analysis were conducted using SPSS 27 and Smart PLS 3. The study found high awareness but low usage of Facebook for RDC among Nigerian university students. Younger and male students showed higher willingness and actual use of Facebook for RDC. Awareness directly impacted by awareness, and acted as Facebook usage for RDC, with stronger impacts for males and students aged 19 to 28. Willingness was positively impacted and acted as a negative mediator between awareness and usage for some age groups and genders. These findings provide important insights into using Facebook for RDC among students in Nigerian universities and highlight the need to consider the impact of demographic factors such as age and. (shrink)

Adults aged 65 and above comprise the fastest growing sector of the world’s population. In the context of increasing numbers of older adults, employment policies have become a prominent issue. Governments recognize the importance of increasing participation in working age population and providing them with equal workplace opportunities. Yet, it appears that policies raising employment rates of older adults have become a slogan that governments use for election purposes, but the reality is different. In the groundbreaking report “Working Better with (...) Age: Poland‘ prepared by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia belong to a group of countries where the increase in the employment rate of older adults is well below the OECD average. The objective of our critical review is to evaluate current employment policies for older adults, including but not limited to healthy work conditions, age management strategies, employment services for older workers, and strategies implemented to prevent the age discrimination, in these three countries. This article also discusses the reasons for the reduction in the employment of older adults, the current barriers in employing older adults that require governments’ attention, and suggests solutions for creating an age-friendly labor market that can effectively make use of older adults’ competencies. Employment rates for people of different ages are significantly affected by government policies with regard to higher education, pensions, and retirement age. (shrink)

“Age of life” is one of the essential characteristics that differentiate people. Age perception is also associated with social justice. The concept of age is defined ambiguously. At the same time, the different age criteria also forms the basis of age differentiation and age discrimination. The population lead to distinctions of age groups, age categories, and generations. Differences between generations also lead to Study in the concepts of intergenerationality, intergenerational justice, and intergenerational policies.

The declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020, led to unprecedented events. All regions of the world participated in implementing preventive health measures such as physical distancing, travel restrictions, self-isolation, quarantines, and facility closures. The pandemic started global disruption of socio-economic systems, covering the postponement or cancellation of public events, supply shortages, schools and universities’ closure, evacuation of foreign citizens, a rise in unemployment and inflation, misinformation, the anti-vaccine movement, and incidents of (...) class='Hi'>discrimination toward people affected by or suspected of having coronavirus disease. Attempts have been made to protect the oldest age group at risk, but in many cases, this has led to over-restriction and age discrimination. The rationale for working on the Research Topic "Socio-economic systems in the post-pandemic world: Design thinking, strategic planning, management, and public policy" was the need to start reflecting on resilience and lessons learned from this public health event that revealed the global unpreparedness in critical areas. Also, the pandemic triggered both top-down and bottom-up responses that needed more in-depth analyzes. This Research Topic covers interdisciplinary contributions addressing new thinking, challenges, and transformations required for post-pandemic global, national, regional, and local realities. The presented Research Topic combines studies focused on recognizing the actions and interventions leading to the recovery of socio-economic systems during the tail end and after the pandemic. The studies delivered recommendations regarding, among others, the care of vulnerable, planning socio-economic restart, and imagining the "new normal.". (shrink)

This chapter investigates older people’s needs in contemporary Ghana using the analyses of quantitative and qualitative data sets. The findings identified eight distinct patterns of needs, namely basic needs, care, and domestic help; sociability, emotional and affective support; information; counseling; spiritual needs, free bus rides, and rights. These needs highlight older adults’ social and personal requirements regarding daily living and healthcare in their desire to age with dignity. Their provision may avert problems related to population ageing, including old-age dependency. These (...) needs can be addressed through the following measures. First, the facilitation of the informational needs of older people is attainable through the introduction of initiation for adults and/or older people into the social structure and/or life course. Second, the provision of houses through the mediation of government on behalf of pension contributors, payable in installments. These may ensure appropriate adjustment to life in old age, albeit longevity. The life-sustaining needs of older people have existed since time immemorial. However, these needs are now taking a new dimension in the era of population ageing and increased life expectancy, economic hardships, and weakening extended family support system. We, therefore, argue that these require interventions at both the family and institutional or state levels or formal and informal levels, particularly needs satisfying programs and policies should be instituted by the government in addition to the existing ones. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to examine whether it is morally wrong to ban only male citizens from leaving a country in wartime, and if it is, why it is the case. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky declared martial law and ordered general mobilization, at the same time prohibiting male citizens aged 18 to 60 from crossing the border. The justifiability of the ban is in dispute, and opponents have made a case in both legal and (...) moral dimensions. In the moral dimension, there are arguments based on consequentialism, individual freedom, and fairness or non-discrimination. In this paper, I focus on the third argument and argue that the ban unfairly and morally wrongfully discriminates against male Ukraine citizens on the basis of their gender. First, I define discrimination and apply it to our case. Second, moving from the descriptive definition of discrimination to its moral wrongness, I argue that the male-only ban is unfair and morally unjustified. Third, I argue that the ban can also be deemed morally wrong from one of the prominent views in the field of the ethics of discrimination, namely the deliberative freedom view. (shrink)

Synthetic biology (SynBio) covers two main areas: application engineering, exemplified by metabolic engi- neering, and the design of life from artificial building blocks. As the general public is often reluctant to embrace synthetic approaches, preferring nature to artifice, its immediate future will depend very much on the public’s reaction to the unmet needs created by the pervasive demands of sustainability. On the other hand, this reluctance should not have a negative impact on research that will now take into account the (...) existence of the multiple transitions that cells face over time. The ages of life—birth, development, maturation, senescence and death—reflect specific key transitions and have, until now, rarely been taken into account in SynBio designs. This results in a mismatch between novelty and the very long evolutionary time that led to the existing chassis [remember that this is the common term used to describe the cellular framework as seen by synthetic biologists (de Lorenzo & Danchin, 2008)]. It also implies that, in general, transitions between growth stages will be taken into account with the appro- priate embodiment of highly specific processes. This is particularly important when adapting new models to their host, whether natural or artificial. Adaptation fol- lows two stages, short-term accommodation of new entities and long-term assimilation into the cell as a whole. This requires discrimination between classes of entities. We suggest that proteins playing the essential role of Maxwell’ demons, here named Maxwell’s dis- criminators (MxDs) to refer to their original function, will permit the assimilation and accommodation of artificial constructs. As a consequence, we can foresee that class discrimination, beyond mere recognition, will be implemented in SynBio 2.0, leading to an authentic par- adigm shift (Kuhn, 1996), based on conceptions that embody information as a genuine currency of reality. (shrink)

Assembly of minimal genomes revealed many genes encoding unknown functions. Three overlooked functional categories account for some of them. Cells are prone to make errors and age. As a first key function, discrimination between proper and changed entities is indispensable. Discrimination requires management of information, an authentic, yet abstract, cur- rency of reality. For example proteins age, sometimes very fast. The cell must identify, then get rid of old proteins without destroying young ones. Implementing discrimination in cells (...) leads to the second set of functions, usually ignored. Being abstract, information must nevertheless be embodied into material entities, with unavoidable idiosyncratic properties. This brings about novel unmet needs. Hence, the buildup of cells elicits specific but awkward material implementations, ‘kludges’ that become essential under particular settings, while difficult to identify. Finally, a third functional category char- acterizes the need for growth, with metabolic implementations allowing the cell to put together the growth of its cytoplasm, membranes, and genome, spanning different spatial dimensions. Solving this metabolic quandary, critical for engineering novel synthetic biology chassis, uncovered an unexpected role for CTP synthetase as the coordinator of nonhomothetic growth. Because a significant number of SynBio constructs aim at creating cell factories we expect that they will be attacked by viruses (it is not by chance that the function of the CRISPR system was identified in industrial settings). Substantiating the role of CTP, natural selection has dealt with this hurdle via synthesis of the antimetabolite 30-deoxy-30,40-didehydro- CTP, recruited for antiviral immunity in all domains of life. (shrink)

This paper comments on the strategies and goals of a politics of recognition as celebrated by Nancy Nicol’s important documentary coverage of the gay and lesbian movement for family rights in Quebec. While agreeing that ending legal discrimination against lgbt families is important, I suggest that political recognition of same-sex families and their children is a too limited goal for queer families and their allies. Moreover, it is a goal, I argue, that often trades on trades on troublesome assumptions (...) about gender, class, race, age and normative commitments to monogamy as these relate to distinctions between, for example, “fit” and “unfit” parents. (shrink)

The growing demand for uterus transplantation (UTx) invites continued philosophical evaluation of the function of UTx (and what constitutes its ‘success’), as well as the recipient eligibility for UTx. Currently, UTx caters to partnered, cisgender women of childbearing age looking to get pregnant and give birth to a biogenetically related child. The medical justification for this—the treatment of uterine infertility—explains the primacy of this practice. However, this dominant conceptualization of UTx does not necessarily capture the diverse needs for which both (...) cis‐ and transgender women might take interest in UTx that are not strictly procreative, such as bodily integrity and gender identity reasons. In this paper, I argue that non‐procreative motivations for uterus acquisition ought to be taken seriously as a matter of non‐discrimination and consistency. (shrink)

The practice of Afiye (Caste System) among the Yala communities of Cross River State of Nigeria, settled in Yala Ogoja, Yala Obubra, and Yala Ikom, is an age long practice, which no one today can precisely point to its exact origin. The practice of Afiye and the Ayiwoole (slaves and freeborn), without considering the grave consequences, here analysed as implication of the system. The implication involves the political implication which tends to hinder the political rights of members of this caste, (...) through its social structure. There is also the implication on Human Right, whereby members of this caste are denied freedom of association and movement. There is also social discrimination, which has equally affected their social standing in their different communities, such that they cannot be Ochuole (Traditional Rulers) or be allowed to participate in traditional burial rites of the traditional ruler that is regarded as the father of all. The economic factor is not left out as dispute bothering on land matters are usually and often settled in the palace and since they are the unwelcome species of human beings in the palace, there are left with no other opportunity than to be disempowered. Of course, there is the strained relationship and conflicts between the Ayiwoole and the Afiye, what Ralph Darendorf called the dialectical conflict theory. This has led to under development, Anger, bitterness and uncooperative attitude and indeed suspicion and all manners of negative tendencies among the Yala communities. It is the submission of this paper therefore, that the practice of this caste with its antecedent implications be put to a stop in order to bring about a meaningful development to Yala land. (shrink)

Background: Moral Growth Mindset (MGM) is a belief about whether one can become a morally better person through efforts. Prior research showed that MGM is positively associated with promotion of moral motivation among adolescents and young adults. We developed and tested the English version of the MGM measure in this study with data collected from college student participants. Methods: In Study 1, we tested the reliability and validity of the MGM measure with two-wave data (N = 212, Age mean = (...) 24.18 years, SD = 7.82 years). In Study 2, we retested the construct validity of the MGM measure once again and its association with other moral and positive psychological indicators to test its convergent and discriminant validity (N = 275, Age mean = 22.02 years, SD = 6.34 years). Results: We found that the MGM measure was reliable and valid from Study 1. In Study 2, the results indicated that the MGM was well correlated with other moral and positive psychological indicators as expected. Conclusions: We developed and validated the English version of the MGM measure in the present study. The results from studies 1 and 2 supported the reliability and validity of the MGM measure. Given this, we found that the English version of the MGM measure can measure one’s MGM as we intended. (shrink)

Civic non-participation in public life is one of the most important problems in contemporary Poland. This phenomenon makes all generations equal and it requires breaking of the barriers in intergenerational integration. Presented study shows that the aspiration for coherence and stability of the system may be based on the taking advantage by using benefits of age difference in society. Article indicates dimensions and levels in seeking quality solutions for the integration in conditions of shaping social dispersion space order. It also (...) contains types of different approaches to the integration barriers related with process of aging society and discrimination based on age phenomenon. ** Obywatelskie nieuczestnictwo w życiu publicznym należy do najważniejszych problemów współczesnej Polski. Zjawisko to czyni wszystkie pokolenia równymi a przeciwstawienie się mu wymaga przełamania barier integracji międzypokoleniowej. Niniejsze opracowanie wskazuje, iż dążenie do spójności i stabilności systemu może opierać się na wykorzystaniu korzyści z różnicy wieku członków społeczeństwa. Wskazane zostały wymiary i poziomy poszukiwania rozwiązań jakościowych na rzecz integracji w warunkach kształtowania się w przestrzeni społecznej ładu rozproszonego oraz typy barier integracji międzypokoleniowej związane z procesem starzenia się społeczeństw i zjawiskiem dyskryminacji ze względu na wiek. -/- . (shrink)

A crucial socio-political challenge for our age is how to rede!ne or extend group membership in such a way that it adequately responds to phenomena related to globalization like the prevalence of migration, the transformation of family and social networks, and changes in the position of the nation state. Two centuries ago Immanuel Kant assumed that international connectedness between humans would inevitably lead to the realization of world citizen rights. Nonetheless, globalization does not just foster cosmopolitanism but simultaneously yields the (...) development of new group boundaries. Group membership is indeed a fundamental issue in political processes, for: “the primary good that we distribute to one another is membership in some human community” – it is within the political community that power is being shared and, if possible, held back from non-members. In sum, it is appropriate to consider group membership a fundamental ingredient of politics and political theory. How group boundaries are drawn is then of only secondary importance. Indeed, Schmitt famously declared that “[e]very religious, moral, economic, ethical, or other antithesis transforms into a political one if it is suffciently strong to group human beings e#ectively according to friend and enemy”. Even though Schmitt’s idea of politics as being constituted by such antithetical groupings is debatable, it is plausible to consider politics among other things as a way of handling intergroup di#erences. Obviously, some of the group-constituting factors are more easily discernable from one’s appearance than others, like race, ethnicity, or gender. As a result, factors like skin color or sexual orientation sometimes carry much political weight even though individuals would rather con!ne these to their private lives and individual identity. Given the potential tension between the political reality of particular groupmembership defnitions and the – individual and political – struggles against those definitions and corresponding attitudes, citizenship and civic behavior becomes a complex issue. As Kymlicka points out, it implies for citizens an additional obligation to non-discrimination regarding those groups: “[t]his extension of non-discrimination from government to civil society is not just a shift in the scale of liberal norms, it also involves a radical extension in the obligations of liberal citizenship”. Unfortunately, empirical research suggests that political intolerance towards other groups “may be the more natural and ‘easy’ position to hold”. Indeed, since development of a virtue of civility or decency regarding other groups is not easy, as it often runs against deeply engrained stereotypes and prejudices, political care for matters like education is justified. Separate schools, for example, may erode children’s motivation to act as citizens, erode their capacity for it and!nally diminish their opportunities to experience transcending their particular group membership and behave as decent citizens. This chapter outlines a possible explanation for such consequences. That explanation will be found to be interdisciplinary in nature, combining insights from political theory and cognitive neuroscience. In doing so, it does not focus on collective action, even though that is a usual focus for political studies. For example, results pertaining to collective political action have demonstrated that the relation between attitudes and overt voting behavior or political participation is not as direct and strong as was hoped for. Several conditions, including the individual’s experiences, self-interest, and relevant social norms, turned out to interfere in the link between his or her attitude and behavior. Important as collective action is, this chapter is concerned with direct interaction between agents and the in$uence of group membership on such interaction – in particular joint action. Although politics does include many forms of action that require no such physical interaction, such physical interaction between individuals remains fundamental to politics – this is the reason why separate schooling may eventually undermine the citizenship of its isolated pupils. This chapter will focus on joint action, de!ned as: “any form of social interaction whereby two or more individuals coordinate their actions in space and time to bring about a change in the environment”. Cognitive neuroscienti!c evidence demonstrates that for such joint action to succeed, the agents have to integrate the actions and expected actions of the other person in their own action plans at several levels of speci!city. Although neuroscienti!c research is necessarily limited to simple forms of action, this concurs with a philosophical analysis of joint action, which I will discuss below. (shrink)

The economy of Bangladesh mainly depends on agriculture. Any development can’t be possible because females and males are equally distributed in the country. Women can play a vital role if they properly participated in farm activities as well as in other income-generating activities outside the home. Rice mills are very much dependent on human labour, and almost 5 millions of unorganised workers are working in different rice mills, and more than 60 per cent of them is a female worker. But (...) the working environment suffers from different discrimination and harassment issues between male and female workers. The present study aimed to find out the socio-economic status of women labour at rice husking mill of Bangladesh. Discrimination between male and female workers and the factor affecting the standard of living of women’s household will be focused. The study was carried out in two districts namely Mymensingh and Sherpur. From each district, rice husking mill was selected by using a cluster sampling technique, and 70 male and 70 female labours were considered as a sample. The survey was conducted by direct interviews using a questionnaire. Data generated were analysed by using tabular and statistical techniques. The average family size of the respondents was 4.46, and 57.05% of the participants were females while 42.95% were males in the household and 65.71% of female had no education. 88% of the women’s main occupation was in the rice mill as a daily paid labour. Average wage rate of male and female worker was 184.31 Tk. And 135.95 Tk., respectively. Age, education, number of family member, total land, number of earning member, the wage of women labour and working time and experience were the factors influencing income and living standard of female labours. There were various social violence cases against female labours in the working environment of rice husking mills. In the study area, 93% of female workers get lower wages, 90% of them had no accommodation facility. Besides they did not have sanitation facility (80%), opportunity to take rest at the middle of work (64%) and meal support (71%). (shrink)

[First paragraphs: This essay takes its practical orientation from my experiences as a member of a philosophy reading group on death row at Riverbend Maximum Security Penitentiary in Nashville, Tennessee. Its theoretical orientation comes from W. E. B. Du Bois’ lecture-turned-essay, “Criteria of Negro Art,” which argues that the realm of aesthetics is vitally important in the war against racial discrimination in the United States. And since, according to Michele Alexander’s critically-acclaimed The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the (...) Age of Colorblindness, the prison system should be the primary front today in this war, my essay’s ultimate aim is t/o articulate a new criterion of the present-day “Negro” art being created by a prison population that is still overwhelmingly constituted by persons of color. In my first section, I will show how Du Bois’ insights in “Criteria of Negro Art” remain relevant today, especially in the prison context, and argue that it is thus appropriate for my new criterion to be shaped by his distinctive conception of “propaganda.” In my second section, through a close reading of two texts by Michel Foucault (the pivotal thinker of modern imprisonment), I will flesh out this new criterion, “self-torsion,” defined as the effect of prisoners’ attempts at self-care within a prison system that distorts those attempts into further exploitation of both prisoners and the outside world that imprisons them. And my final section, in an attempt to illustrate this new criterion’s efficacy as a form of propagandistic resistance to contemporary racism, will deploy self-torsion as a critique of two artworks created by imprisoned members of my reading group at Riverbend penitentiary. (shrink)

Increasing behavioural evidence suggests that expert video game players (VGPs) show enhanced visual attention and visuospatial abilities, but what underlies these enhancements remains unclear. We administered the Poffenberger paradigm with concurrent electroencephalogram (EEG) recording to assess occipital N1 latencies and interhemispheric transfer time (IHTT) in expert VGPs. Participants comprised 15 right-handed male expert VGPs and 16 non-VGP controls matched for age, handedness, IQ and years of education. Expert VGPs began playing before age 10, had a minimum 8 years experience, and (...) maintained playtime of at least 20 hours per week over the last 6 months. Non-VGPs had little-to-no game play experience (maximum 1.5 years). Participants responded to checkerboard stimuli presented to the left and right visual fields while 128-channel EEG was recorded. Expert VGPs responded significantly more quickly than non-VGPs. Expert VGPs also had significantly earlier occipital N1s in direct visual pathways (the hemisphere contralateral to the visual field in which the stimulus was presented). IHTT was calculated by comparing the latencies of occipital N1 components between hemispheres. No significant between-group differences in electrophysiological estimates of IHTT were found. Shorter N1 latencies may enable expert VGPs to discriminate attended visual stimuli significantly earlier than non-VGPs and contribute to faster responding in visual tasks. As successful video-game play requires precise, time pressured, bimanual motor movements in response to complex visual stimuli, which in this sample began during early childhood, these differences may reflect the experience and training involved during the development of video-game expertise, but training studies are needed to test this prediction. (shrink)

In 2001, three non-Aboriginal men in their twenties were charged with the sexual assault of a twelve year old Aboriginal girl in rural Saskatchewan. Legal proceedings lasted almost seven years and included two preliminary hearings, two jury trials, two retrials with juries, and appeals to the provincial appeal court and the Supreme Court of Canada. One accused was convicted. The case raises questions about the administration of justice in sexual assault cases in Saskatchewan. Based on observation and analysis of the (...) record, this paper: (1) examines relationships between legal errors dealing with availability of the defence of “belief in consent” and interpretation of the “all reasonable steps” provision, the need for retrials, and apprehended race-gender-age bias and discrimination; and 2) proposes incremental and systemic remedies to address the weaknesses in police, prosecutorial and judicial policy and practice highlighted by this case. (shrink)

Niepełnosprawność jest jedn¸a} z cech różnicuj¸a}cych jednostki i grupy we współczesnych społeczeństwach. Osoby o ograniczonej sprawności fizycznej, poznawczej i psychicznej s¸a} szczególnie narażone na dyskryminacjȩ oraz wykluczenie społeczne, gospodarcze i polityczne. Co istotne kwestia socjalna osób niepełnosprawnych na pocz¸a}tku XXI wieku zmienia siȩ wchodz¸ac w relacjȩ z procesem starzenia siȩ ludności. Artykuł ma na celu przybliżenie wybranych teoretycznych koncepcji działań na rzecz poprawy wizerunku niepełnosprawności i ograniczania barier doświadczanych przez osoby niepełnosprawne w dostȩpie do różnego rodzaju zasobów, przestrzeni i szans. (...) Krytyczna analiza literatury przedmiotu obejmuje wskazanie cech koncepcji polityki aktywizacji oraz zasad i celów polityki społecznej w holistycznym paradygmacie normalizacji. Podsumowanie zawiera możliwe dalsze kierunki badań i analiz. ** Disability is one of the features that differentiate individuals and groups in modern societies. People with reduced physical, cognitive and psychological efficiency are particularly exposed to discrimination and social, economic and political exclusion. What’s important social issue of people with disabilities in the early 21st century changes by entering into a relationship with the ageing of the population. Article aims to introduce some theoretical concepts efforts to improve the image of disability and reduce the barriers faced by persons with disabilities in access to different kinds of resources, spaces and opportunities. A critical analysis of the literature includes: description of the concept of activation policy as well as principles and objectives of social policy in a holistic paradigm of normalization. This summary contains possible future directions of research and analysis. (shrink)

Discrimination, understood as differential treatment of individuals on the basis of their respective group memberships, is widely considered to be morally wrong. This moral judgment is backed in many jurisdictions with the passage of equality of opportunity legislation, which aims to ensure that racial, ethnic, religious, sexual, sexual-orientation, disability and other groups are not subjected to discrimination. This chapter explores the conceptual underpinnings of discrimination and equality of opportunity using the tools of analytical moral and political philosophy.

Discrimination laws usually prohibit discrimination based on some traits, like race, caste, and sex, and not on others, like sports team allegiance. Should socioeconomic class be included among the protected traits? We examine an argument for the view that it should which leads to the conclusion that both direct and indirect socioeconomic discrimination should be prohibited by the state. The argument has three premises: (1) direct paradigmatic discrimination should be prohibited by law; (2) if direct paradigmatic (...) discrimination should be prohibited by law, then so should direct socioeconomic discrimination; and (3) where direct discrimination based on a certain trait should be prohibited by law, so should indirect discrimination on the basis of the same trait. Since we assume most readers will accept (1), the paper is largely devoted to the defense of (2) and (3). The outlawing of direct socioeconomic discrimination would involve an adjustment of the political and legal status quo, but we argue that it should nevertheless be implemented. By contrast, a prohibition on indirect socioeconomic discrimination would require a radical change to the way in which our societies are structured, because many of our laws, policies, and practices systematically (re)produce inequality to the disproportionate detriment of the poor. Our main aim, therefore, is not to defend the prohibition of indirect socioeconomic discrimination, but to show that most people’s views about discrimination are in deep tension with their attitude to current law. Resolving this tension would require for most of us to revise our beliefs either about whether indirect socioeconomic discrimination should be prohibited or about (1)–(3). One might reject the view that law should prohibit socioeconomic discrimination and still accept this claim about a deep tension in most people’s views on discrimination. (shrink)

This article argues that, as commonly understood, indirect discrimination is not necessarily unjust: 1) indirect discrimination involves the disadvantaging in relation to a particular benefit and such disadvantages are not unjust if the overall distribution of benefits and burdens is just; 2) indirect discrimination focuses on groups and group averages and ignores the distribution of harms and benefits within groups subjected to discrimination, but distributive justice is concerned with individuals; and 3) if indirect discrimination as (...) such is unjust, strict egalitarianism has to be the correct account of distributive justice, but such egalitarianism appears vulnerable to the leveling down objection (whether decisively or not), and many theorists explicitly reject strict egalitarianism anyway. The last point threatens the position of liberals who oppose indirect discrimination but think significant inequalities can be just. (shrink)

Discrimination is a central epistemic capacity but typically, theories of discrimination only use discrimination as a vehicle for analyzing knowledge. This paper aims at developing a self-contained theory of discrimination. Internalist theories of discrimination fail since there is no compelling correlation between discriminatory capacities and experiences. Moreover, statistical reliabilist theories are also flawed. Only a modal theory of discrimination is promising. Versions of sensitivity and adherence that take particular alternatives into account provide necessary and (...) sufficient conditions on discrimination. Safety in contrast is not sufficient for discrimination as there are cases of safety that are clearly instances of discrimination failure. The developed account of discrimination between objects will be extended to discrimination between kinds and between types. (shrink)

Philosophers have assumed that as long as discriminatory admission and exclusion policies are off the table, it is possible for one to adopt a restrictionist position on the issue of immigration without having to worry that this position might entail discriminatory outcomes. The problem with this assumption emerges, however,when two important points are taken into consideration. First, immigration controls are not simply discriminatory because they are based on racist or ethnocentric attitudes and beliefs, but can themselves also be the source (...) of social and civic ostracism. Second, by focusing so much on questions of admission and exclusion, philosophers have tended to overlook the discriminatory potential of immigration enforcement mechanisms. In this essay, I make the case that philosophers who deal with the issue of immigration cannot dispense with the potential for discrimination in a state's enforcement mechanism as easily as they have with the potential for discrimination in a state’s admission and exclusions criteria. In addition, I put forth the positive claim that the way to combat this potential for discrimination (e.g., xenophobia) must begin with a defense of, and advocacy for, immigrant rights. (shrink)

In this paper I show that a variety of Cartesian Conceptions of the mental are unworkable. In particular, I offer a much weaker conception of limited discrimination than the one advanced by Williamson (2000) and show that this weaker conception, together with some plausible background assumptions, is not only able to undermine the claim that our core mental states are luminous (roughly: if one is in such a state then one is in a position to know that one is) (...) but also the claim that introspection is infallible with respect to our core mental states (where a belief that C obtains is infallible just in case if one believes that C obtains then C obtains). The upshot is a broader and much more powerful case against the Cartesian conception of the mental than has been advanced hitherto. (shrink)

It is usually accepted that whether or not indirect discrimination is a form of immoral discrimination, it appears to be structurally different from direct discrimination. First, it seems that either one involves the agent focusing on different things while making a decision. Second, it seems that the victim’s group membership is relevant to the outcomes of either sort of action in different ways. In virtue of these two facts, it is usually concluded that indirect discrimination is (...) structurally different from direct discrimination. I argue against the notion that indirect discrimination and direct discrimination have significantly different structures. I first argue that both kinds of discrimination involve similar decision-making processes. Second, I analyze how being in a social group affects personal identity, and from there argue that indirect discrimination and direct discrimination are about group membership similarly. In virtue of these two arguments, I conclude that direct and indirect discrimination are structurally similar. (shrink)

Is it tautological to call an action "wrongful discrimination?" Some philosophers and political theorists answer this question in the affirmative and claim that the term "discrimination" is intrinsically evaluative. Others agree that "discrimination" usually conveys the action’s moral wrongness but claim that the term can be used in a purely descriptive way. In this paper, we present two corpus studies and two experiments designed to test whether the folk concept of discrimination is evaluative. We demonstrate that (...) the term has undergone a historical development and is nowadays no longer used purely descriptively. Further, we show that this evaluation cannot be cancelled without yielding a contradiction. We conclude that the descriptive use of "discriminatory" is a thing of the past. (shrink)

This special issue consists of four articles, contributed by David Owen; Désirée Lim, Sahar Akhtar and (as co-authors) Mollie Gerver, Miranda Simon, Patrick Lown and Dominik Duell. These contributions address issues related to migration policies with the aim of bringing normative theories of migration and discrimination into dialogue. These theories describe the various types of discrimination inherent in the domestic and global migration systems, as well as assess arguments, pro et contra, about whether these forms of discrimination (...) are permissible. (shrink)

Employers sometimes use personality tests in hiring or specifically look for candidates with certain personality traits such as being social, outgoing, active, and extraverted. Therefore, they hire based on personality, specifically extraversion in part at least. The question arises whether this practice is morally permissible. We argue that, in a range of cases, it is not. The common belief is that, generally, it is not permissible to hire based on sex or race, and the wrongness of such hiring practices is (...) based on two widely accepted principles: the Relevance Principle and the Fairness Principle. The Relevance Principle states that hiring should be based on what is relevant to job performance, while the Fairness Principle states that hiring should be based on features that individuals can control. Since hiring based on sex or race violates these principles, it is wrong. However, we argue that, in a range of cases, hiring based on extraversion also violates these principles, and assuming the validity of the Relevance and the Fairness Principles, it follows that personality discrimination is morally wrong in those cases. (shrink)

There is a certain metaphor that has enjoyed tremendous longevity in the evolution of ageing literature. According to this metaphor, nature has a certain goal or purpose, the perpetuation of the species, or, alternatively, the reproductive success of the individual. In relation to this goal, the individual organism has a function, job, or task, namely, to breed and, in some species, to raise its brood to maturity. On this picture, those who cannot, or can no longer, reproduce are somehow invisible (...) to, or even dispensable to, the evolutionary process. Here, I argue that the metaphor should be discarded, not on the grounds that it is a metaphor, but on the grounds that this particular metaphor distorts our understanding of the evolution of ageing. One reason the metaphor is problematic is that it frames senescence and death as nature’s verdict on the value of older individuals. Instead, we should explore a different metaphor: the lengthy post-reproductive period in humans and some other animals is not an accident of culture, but designed by nature for the purpose of supporting and guiding younger generations. On this alternate picture, different stages of life have their own evolutionary rationales, their distinctive design features, their special mandates. (shrink)

The English language now dominates scientific communications. Yet, many scientists have English as their second language. Their English proficiency may therefore often be more limited than that of a ‘native speaker’, and their scientific contributions (e.g. manuscripts) in English may frequently contain linguistic features that disrupt the fluency of a reader’s, or listener’s information processing even when the contributions are understandable. Scientific gatekeepers (e.g. journal reviewers) sometimes cite these features to justify negative decisions on manuscripts. Such justifications may rest on (...) the prima facie plausible assumption that linguistic characteristics that hinder fast and easy understandability of scientific contributions are epistemically undesirable in science. I shall raise some doubts about this assumption by drawing on empirical research on processing fluency and its biasing effects. I also argue that directing scientists with English as a foreign language toward approaching ‘native-level’ English can have the negative consequence of reducing their potential to make scientific belief formation more reliable. These points suggest that one seemingly compelling justification for linguistically discriminating against scientific contributions in ‘non-native’ English is questionable and that the common insistence by scientific gatekeepers on ‘native-like’ English may be epistemically harmful to science. (shrink)

Ageing is an intergenerational issue with implications for everyone. Population ageing present itself with opportunity and challenges. So, the extent to which society prepare for and invest in an ageing population will determine whether it creates an additional burden or delivers demographic dividend.

This article provides a philosophical overview of different approaches to age and ageing. It is often assumed that our age is determined by the amount of time we have been alive. Here, I challenge this belief. I argue that there are at least three plausible, yet unsatisfactory, accounts to age and ageing: the chronological account, the biological account, and the experiential account. I show that all of them fall short of fully determining what it means to age. Addressing these problems, (...) I suggest the Two‐tier principle of age: whenever the three accounts of age contradict, combine the two accounts that differ the least, and reject the third. However, while this principle does solve some difficulties, it is itself vulnerable to problems; therefore I propose we should jettison it. I conclude that there are no accounts to ageing that are satisfactory; they all come with a bullet to bite. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that certain ways in which the relationship among discrimination, emotions and health is presented can undermine equity. I identify a model of this relationship the discrimination-emotion-health model - and claim that while the model is important for understanding the detrimental impact that discrimination and oppression can have on emotions and health, certain implications of the model are troubling. I identify six critiques of the model, and show that equity could be undermined, for (...) example, when stereotypes of the oppressed are reinforced and the experiences of the privileged are normalized. I then assess the implications of my analysis of the model and its critique for a framework of health equity, demonstrating what such a framework would need to look like in order for it to best represent discrimination as a psychosocial determinant of health. (shrink)

Members of the field of philosophy have, just as other people, political convictions or, as psychologists call them, ideologies. How are different ideologies distributed and perceived in the field? Using the familiar distinction between the political left and right, we surveyed an international sample of 794 subjects in philosophy. We found that survey participants clearly leaned left (75%), while right-leaning individuals (14%) and moderates (11%) were underrepresented. Moreover, and strikingly, across the political spectrum, from very left-leaning individuals and moderates to (...) very right-leaning individuals, participants reported experiencing ideological hostility in the field, occasionally even from those from their own side of the political spectrum. Finally, while about half of the subjects believed that discrimination against left- or right-leaning individuals in the field is not justified, a significant minority displayed an explicit willingness to discriminate against colleagues with the opposite ideology. Our findings are both surprising and important, because a commitment to tolerance and equality is widespread in philosophy, and there is reason to think that ideological similarity, hostility, and discrimination undermine reliable belief formation in many areas of the discipline. (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue that it is a moral obligation for companies, firstly, to accept their moral responsibility with respect to non-discrimination, and secondly, to address the issue with a full-fledged programme, including but not limited to the countering of microsocial discrimination processes through specific policies. On the basis of a broad sketch of how some discrimination mechanisms are actually influencing decisions, that is, causing intended as well as unintended bias in Human Resources Management, I (...) will argue that the well known tools of legislation and ethical codes are necessary although insufficient to cope with the problem. However, based on empirical evidence, we know which set of measures is likely to diminish discrimination. Taking non-discrimination seriously implies complex and longitudinal policies which include assigning responsibility for a non-discrimination policy within the firm, making managers conscious of implicit stereotypes and helping them to cope with prejudices that no one can totally overcome. Insofar as corporate responsibility with respect to non-discrimination is accepted and strategies that are not prohibitively expensive are known, companies are bound to implement them. Not implementing the best set of measures may be considered at least as a moral shortcoming or, depending on the size of the company, mere lip service to the non-discrimination principle. Although the paper refers to empirical material of diverse backgrounds, its intent is clearly normative. It wishes to spell out what companies ought to do if they are committed to responsible behaviour. The discussion of effective remedies against discrimination is based on a case study of a French company. The retailer Auchan was recently surprised to learn that it was discriminating against ethnic minorities despite strong ethical standards, an ethics committee and ethical leadership. The company dropped its naïve beliefs and set up an ambitious policy cope with the issue. The case illustrates what recent empirical research has revealed about the effectiveness of diversity policies: establishing responsibility for diversity results, firm ethical commitment and support from top management make diversity programs effective. (shrink)