Women Deserve Better: FiLiA Responds to the Equality Law Call for Evidence
Critical protections for women are too often unconsidered and failing in their purpose.
We have responded to the Office for Equality and Opportunity (OEO)’s equality law call for evidence to raise the alarm that the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) is failing women. The OEO are interested in whether non-public bodies exercising public functions are meeting their obligations under the PSED. However, this narrow focus misses a more fundamental opportunity.
Women are being failed not just by private contractors or charities delivering public services, but by all public bodies. The problem is not limited to who delivers the function – the fact is that the PSED is being ignored, misunderstood or treated as a tick-box exercise, and therefore risks becoming a duty in name only.
The PSED, part of the Equality Act 2010, requires public bodies in the UK to consider how their policies and decisions affect people with protected characteristics. It aims to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations. The duty applies to both policy-making and day-to-day operations.
How the PSED is implemented can have a significant impact on women. When implemented properly, the PSED has the power to drive real change. But as FiLiA set out in our recent blog on Equality Impact Assessments (EqIAs), that power is being neglected, to the detriment of meaningful change.
Women are habitually an afterthought in public policy. Impact assessments - a tool meant to ensure that policies consider the needs and outcomes for different groups, including women - are carried out late, if at all. Sex-disaggregated data is frequently missing, making it impossible to see how policies affect women and men differently, and preventing evidence-based responses to inequality. Most harmfully, consultation with women’s organisations is not obligatory. Even when policies clearly affect women, such as in areas like disability, housing, or migration, there is no requirement to involve women’s organisations in the policymaking process. As a result, women's experiences and needs are often overlooked. For example, policies concerning Universal Credit, designed around a male breadwinner model, leave women economically dependent and at risk of abuse. Local authorities outsource refuge services to organisations that fail to uphold women’s rights such as when Brighton & Hove City Council replaced Rise, a specialist local refuge provider with a larger, non-specialist housing association. Women there have reported a lack of specialist support for mothers with children or those with health needs, and a lack of vital support roles, such as a domestic abuse advocate. While the government has recognised that some problems lie with contractors such as these, it has missed the opportunity to undertake a fundamental review of the implementation of PSED across the board.
Our submission to the OEO's call for evidence makes clear that women’s rights and needs are routinely overlooked by both public and non-public bodies. Marginalised women – black and minoritised women, disabled women, lone mothers, migrant women, survivors of male violence – are paying the price for a system that talks equality but does not deliver it.
In England, the PSED – which is meant to ensure public bodies consider the impact of their decisions on equality – is far weaker than in Scotland or Wales. English authorities are only required to set one equality goal every four years, and they are not legally required to carry out thorough Equality Impact Assessments or consult with women’s organisations. There is little enforcement: the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) lacks the powers and funding to ensure compliance. Judicial review is prohibitively expensive and inaccessible for most women, particularly those affected by multiple inequalities. There are few consequences for failure to comply with the Duty – and so failure continues.
Our response to the OEO includes clear, evidence-based recommendations:
Mandate robust, intersectional Equality Impact Assessments using sex-disaggregated data.
Extend PSED obligations to all organisations delivering public functions with proper accountability.
Reform procurement so contracts actively support women’s safety, needs and rights.
Strengthen the duties in England to match and exceed the devolved nations’ frameworks.
Fund and empower the EHRC to monitor and enforce the duty effectively.
Put women – especially marginalised women – at the centre of public policy, from design to delivery.
These recommendations build on FiLiA’s ongoing work to champion women’s rightful place in policy making, including via the proper use of Equality Impact Assessments, and our recent contributions to debates in Parliament on women’s equality. Equality law must mean something in practice, not just on paper.
At a time when women’s rights are being eroded, services are being cut and our voices sidelined; the government needs to do better. The PSED has potential, but that potential is not enough without concrete understanding of the issues that hold it back from successful implementation.
The OEO call for evidence on equality law is the first step for the UK government to stop outsourcing responsibility without ensuring compliance, to hear the voices of those it has a responsibility to protect and to embed justice. That means listening to women and taking our lives seriously and working toward enforcing equality not just as a principle, but as a practice.