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Thursday 17th May 2012

Equality Bill

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Equality Bill

Posted by Maggie Berry 23 June 2010 Politics |  Women |  Women in business 2010 looks to be a good year for progress. We now have a new government, but also the new Equality Bill should come into force in October. It has now passed its final stage in parliament and will replace lots of separate laws and measures with one new act to make it easier for organisations to understand.

Of course saying that, law is never that easy to understand, so what will the bill mean in terms of women in employment? Personnel Today explains the top ten issues employers need to prepare for, but here are the main features of the bill that will affect women:

Gender pay gap audits: if progress on reporting hasn’t been made by 2013, the government will be able to make it compulsory for employers with over 250 employees to report on their gender pay gap. Public bodies that employ more than 150 people will also be required to report on gender pay as well as other equality data by April 2011.

Positive action: when it comes to recruitment and promotion, employers will be able to favour under-represented groups to increase diversity, as long as the candidates are of equal suitability.

Single equality duty: From April 2011 existing equality laws will be consolidated but the single duty will also be extended to cover sexual orientation, religion or belief, pregnancy and maternity, and gender reassignment.

Diversity in procurement: Private sector firms bidding for government contracts will have to publish details of their diversity policies.

No secrecy clauses: there will be no more bans on employees discussing pay.

More tribunal powers: tribunals will be able to order employers found guilty of discrimination against a single employee to be to make changes to their hiring and pay practices.

These are some groundbreaking changes which could make a real difference to women in the workplace – let’s hope they do. We will be releasing a White Paper shortly on the Equality Act but in them meantime we hope this post is useful.  You can read the bill in full here.
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