New Gender Equality Duty

by Kate Ramsden

The Gender Equality Duty is the biggest change in sex equality legislation in 30 years and means public authorities must actively promote equality between men and women as part of the new Equality Act coming into force in April 2007.

So what will our employers have to do?

Public sector employers and service providers (including voluntary organisations) will need to radically rethink what they do and how services are delivered.

The core is "the general duty" to get rid of discrimination and harassment and to make sure that men and women have equal opportunity.

The second aspect outlines "specific duties" setting out the steps public authorities must take to deliver on this responsibility. They must: l publish an action plan setting out how they will do this. This will need to be monitored and reviewed every 3 years.

• develop an equal pay policy and review it regularly to make sure it is working.
• conduct gender impact assessments of all law and policy developments to make sure that they affect men and women equally.
• consult employees, service users and other key people in doing all this.

This will all have to be done by the the time the law comes in on 7 April 2007. For further information: www.unison.org.uk/women www.eoc.org.uk

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