One of the key insights of substantive equality is the recognition that it is not color, gender or some other group characteristic per se which is at issue, but the attendant disadvantage. This focus on disadvantage means that, for substantive equality to be effective, it should include a...

This article argues that in developing social rights to counterbalance economic freedoms, the EU has begun to reformulate traditional notions of rights. Instead of creating rights in their traditional individualized, negative, judicially enforceable, and fault-based form, a new proactive model...

Traditionally in the UK, distributive inequalities have been dealt with quite separately from inequality based on sex, race, or other ‘status’. While distributive inequalities are regarded as the domain of the political sphere, inequality on grounds of ‘status’ is dealt with by...

When the Human Rights Act was introduced in 1998, it was taken for granted that the project of bringing rights home simply entailed incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights. It is only now, over a decade later, that attention is being paid to the content of those rights....

Socio-economic rights and equality have the potential to form a powerful partnership. However, the precise relationship in the context of gender remains controversial. In this article, I argue that simply extending socio-economic rights to women is not sufficient. This does little to address the...