Are we optimistic about equality?

The damaging aspect of inequality is that the negative impacts and reasons for them are often multi-layered. Another issue is that many people just don’t want to deal with it effectively because doing so will mean taking off the rhetoric and revealing your inadequacies, prejudices or shortcomings as an organisation around equality.

If we look at the Social Issues Research Council has published a report, which suggests that, as a nation, Brits are more optimistic than we might believe. But, being Brits, we are very modest about this and don't really want to admit it.

This report presents the first findings of research conducted by the Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC) into the nature of optimism in 21st century Britain. The research, commissioned by The National Lottery, has provided a distinctive and definitive account of the role that optimism plays in the lives of the British public, focusing on the importance of optimism both as part of individual identity and personal outlook and as a central factor in social relationships.

Our ideas about optimism, and the extent to which we think optimistically, are formed both individually according to our personal habit and socially in relation to the social worlds in which we live. As individuals and in groups we learn on the one hand to be more wary of some types of risk and on the other to be more optimistic about particular outcomes or eventualities.

Socially contagious optimism

Thinking about optimism as a social phenomenon also allows us to consider how people experience optimism in relation to the people around them. This can be seen at a national level in terms of different aspects of social life, from collective or contagious optimism about the political future (see the recent example of the presidential elections in the United States) to the national economy (e.g. our current lack of optimism about the impact of the so-called ‘credit crunch’), to sports, weather, the impact of the media, etc. On a smaller scale, optimism plays an integral role in our social interactions with others, from motivating or being motivated by colleagues at work to nurturing positive social exchanges with friends or family.

Are you optimistic about equality and were it will be in five years time or ten years time?

Where do you think we will be?