Structuralist and Cultural Domination Theories Meet Title VII: Some Contemporary Influences

This essay first looks at three important theoretical approaches – motivational, structural, and cultural – that mark the scholarly discourses on workplace equality since 1965. The motivational or individual choice theory is well established and has dominated legal discourse throughout this period. I concentrate in this essay on the other two visions, dating structuralist accounts from the mid1970s and cultural domination theories from the mid-1980s.