"Direct participation" hasn't done much to improve equal opportunities for women in the workplace, according to a report published last week by the Dublin-based European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions.

One of the report's authors, Dr Juliet Webster, said that organisational change tended to be carried out without equal opportunities in mind.

Only when employers are conscious of the need to achieve equal opportunities when devising organisational change, will equal opportunities become a reality, she said.

The report, Participating on equal terms? The gender dimensions of direct participation in organisational change, presents a challenge to employers to be conscious of both objectives - organisational change and equal opportunities, she said.

Direct participation increases employees' involvement in the workplace. There are two types of direct participation: consultation and delegation. Individual consultation includes: "arms' length" consultation, for instance where surveys are carried out, and face-to-face appraisal schemes in which employees have the opportunity to comment on a department or on managers.

Workers can also be consulted through temporary group consultation.

Individual delegation could involve a job enrichment scheme while group delegation sees groups being given wider responsibility.

But none of these organisational changes will improve equal opportunities unless equal opportunity is an objective from the outset.

The report found that women work "often with poorer working conditions than their male counterparts". Low-skilled and repetitious work is "much more likely to be a characteristic of female-dominated establishments".

It found that direct participation is more likely to be found in mixed-sex workplaces rather than in predominantly male or predominantly female establishments.

The survey found "no evidence of direct participation being practised with the aim of pressing home equal opportunities objectives in Europe's workplaces. Direct participation has no influence on gender segregation in jobs and working conditions: in some companies, its use even leads to a `de-feminisation' of the labour force".

The report also found that employee training tends to be provided along gender-stereotyped lines, with technical skills training being offered mostly to men.