The Call for Equality.

White males dominated American business before 1970 largely because of social patterns and cultural values. The domination was challenged after World War II, and slowly women and minorities began to establish a presence in American business. During World War II the war effort required women to enter the workforce in unprecedented numbers. After the war many female workers were unwilling to turn over their jobs to returning soldiers and revert to domestic roles. At the same time the incipient social upheaval of the 1950s and the outright revolution of the 1960s had provided new rights to blacks in education and in the workplace by legislation and by judicial order. Equal opportunity was a phrase that resonated throughout the post-World War II decades. To minorities the phrase offered hope; to employers it threatened stifling regulation. While equal opportunity...