Advancing equality for men and women: Government’s proposals for a gender duty

ps/08/05
13 December 2005
MPA briefing paper

Author: Alan Johnson, Head of Human Resources, MPA

This briefing paper has been prepared to inform members and staff. It is not a committee report and no decisions are required.

Summary

The Equality Bill, which is currently going through Parliament, will introduce a gender equality duty for all public authorities in Great Britain. It is expected to take effect in April 2007. These proposals will require public authorities to eliminate discrimination and promote equality of opportunity between men and women.

Key issues

1. From April 2007, when the duty is likely to come into force, all public authorities will be legally bound to eliminate gender discrimination and promote gender equality, similar to the provisions relating to race. The Bill will insert new provisions into the Sex Discrimination Act (SDA).

The role of general and specific duties in promoting gender equality

2. The positive duties proposed in the Equality Bill are of two types. There will be a general duty on all public authorities and there will be specific duties for listed public authorities which includes the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA). A general duty is a set of broad obligations applying to all public authorities. The specific duties are more detailed statutory requirements that will be set out in secondary legislation, to guide listed public authorities in complying with the overall general duty. They point to specific actions that public authorities will need to undertake in order to comply with the general duty.

General duty

3. To comply with the general duty, the MPA will need to:

• have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination – being conscious of their obligations under the Sex Discrimination Act (SDA) and Equal Pay Act (EqPA) and taking steps to ensure compliance;
• have due regard to the need to promote equality of opportunity between men and women – taking active steps to promote gender equality when carrying out their functions and activities.

4. The duty should lead public authorities to:

• Make a difference to women’s and men’s everyday lives, through improved public services responsive to their needs;
• Adopt better employment practices, that would help retain skilled staff; and
• Tackle systemic discrimination more effectively.

Harassment

5. Harassment and sexual harassment are now expressly prohibited under the SDA. It is the government’s intention that this prohibition will be added to the obligations in the gender duty on eliminating unlawful discrimination.

Transsexual people

6. Transsexual people will be explicitly covered by part of the gender duty. The first element of the duty, requiring public authorities to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful sex discrimination will cover transsexual people, as unlawful sex discrimination includes the prohibition in the SDA on discrimination against transsexual people in employment and vocational training.

7. The second element of the duty, dealing with the promotion of equal opportunities between women and men does not include a specific obligation to promote equality of opportunity between transsexual people and people generally. However, transsexual people, as men or women, will benefit from the general obligation to promote equality of opportunity between the sexes. In any event, legal protection for transsexual people will be extended when the Government implements its commitment to bring in legislation to prevent discrimination against them in the provision of goods and services by 21 December 2007.

Specific duties

8. The general duty will be complemented by specific duties that will assist specified public authorities in complying with the general duty. The proposed criteria for determining if public bodies should be subject to the specific duties are:

• Have significant dealings with service users;
• Are significant employers; and
• Have significant impacts on the lives of women and men
• The government is proposing the following specific duties:
• Gender equality goals and schemes
• 9. A public authority must:
• draw up a scheme identifying specific gender equality goals and show how it will implement them;
• consult employees and stakeholders as appropriate when drawing up its gender equality scheme;
• publish its gender equality goals and scheme;
• monitor progress and publish annual reports on progress; and
• review its gender equality goals and scheme every three years.

Equal pay

10. The duties relating to equal pay actually go beyond equal pay and include, for example, the provision of family friendly working arrangements. A public authority must develop and publish a policy on developing equal pay arrangements – including measures to promote equal pay, ensure fair promotion and development opportunities and tackle occupational segregation – between women and men which must be reviewed at regular intervals (for example, every three years).

Procurement

11. The gender duty covers all the functions of a public authority. Public authorities will need to ensure that, where relevant, their procurement policies and procedures reflect the requirements of the duty and that staff are made aware and appropriately trained.

Gender impact assessments

12. Public authorities must:

1. Conduct and publish gender impact assessments, consulting appropriate stakeholders, covering:
   • all primary legislation and significant secondary legislation; and
   • all major proposed developments in employment/policy/services.
2. Develop and publish arrangements for identifying developments that justify conducting a formal gender impact assessment.

Next steps

13. The following legislative and non-legislative steps will follow a very tight timescale before the duties can be put into practical effect:

• the Equality Bill, which contains the legislative basis for the duty, needs to complete its passage through Parliament. The Bill should become an Act early in 2006, but its key provisions will not come into force immediately;
• the government will draft the secondary legislation that will introduce the specific duties;
• the secondary legislation is laid before Parliament;
• guidance and codes of practice will be developed by the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) to assist public authorities prepare for the duty. There will be consultation on drafts of these; and
• Public authorities must have sufficient information, time and support to implement the duties at least six months before implementation. It is therefore intended that the duty will come into effect in April 2007.

Key issues for the Authority

14. There are several issues about the proposals that members will be aware of. These include:

• The Authority’s Equality Impact Assessment process already includes gender and clear guidance on what activities/policies need to be impact assessed;
• The Authority has carried out an equal pay audit within the last three years, but the move to an incremental system should, if anything, ensure the pay scheme is even fairer and more open
• The Authority’s contract regulations already include an equality and diversity statement in relation to procurement

15. Unfortunately, because of the lack of time for proper consultation within the Authority and the very short period between Government consultation and implementation it was not been possible to consider the issues in detail. Nevertheless, there are two specific issues that have been identified, namely:

• The light touch approach is not requiring any basic standard statistics – how feasible will it therefore be to measure progress against targets or to examine comparators across authorities, sectors etc.?
• The requirement for publishing equal pay policies and actions is very welcome but the proposals will allow for a piecemeal approach to tackling the key causes of the gender pay gap so that any genuine resolution of the issue will be very slow.

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