The Gender Equality Duty comes into force in April 2007

Public authorities will have to look at their employment policies to see how they affect women and men.  Some gender issues they may have to think about are:

• Is there a pay gap between men and women doing the same job or jobs of similar value?
• How could flexible working help staff and how will it benefit men and women?
• How do we recruit staff and are we likely to get a good gender balance of candidates?
• Do we have a gender imbalance?  If so, how could we try and rectify the situation?
• Do we have a good return rate from maternity leave?  If not, why and how can we improve?

Tackling Gender Inequality

The Pilot Project to the Equal Opportunities Commission examined the approach taken by 12 public organisations to tackling gender inequality. For some organisations taking part in the project, gender was a relatively weak area within their overall equality work.

"We are not as strong on gender & like many other public authorities have pushed forward on statutory areas of responsibility".

Others were undergoing major internal restructuring giving them few resources to deal with the issue:

"There is no diversity team and we have not had enough time and resources to tackle gender issues previously. We didn’t know where to start".

With this in mind, Eve-olution has developed several new training interventions, based on their five years of research and experience in this area. We have delivered successful female leadership training to hundreds of women, and continue to offer an in-house programme called ‘Leading Edge’, which we have now tailored for the public sector.

"We need a simple toolkit, with written examples of what is expected, the legal aspects, what’s expected of services etc. Give some examples of ways in which the duty can be targeted at a specific workforce, service or training…"

The 'Gender Equality Toolkit' is now available to meet this need, which consists of a PowerPoint presentation, trainer workbook and delegate notes. A Train-the Trainer session is also available.

"There seems to be a degree of defensiveness among top management about the issues around lack of representation of women at senior level".

Gender was a difficult topic for people to grasp, which suggested a need to raise awareness as a key precursor to effective involvement.

"We have started to realise that there is more to gender issues than you first realise..."

Our groundbreaking 'Gender Intelligence'™ workshops are designed to raise awareness of gender issues in a light and even-handed way. These have been enthusiastically received by our clients in both the public and private sector.

(Information taken from www.eoc.org.uk/employment; verbatim excerpts taken from the Report to the EOC – GPSD Pilot Project).

Police Gender Agenda

Do women police officers take care, while male police officers take charge?

Within the police and the business community, men and women’s perceptions of leadership qualities do not match reality.

The recent Gender Agenda 2 report, 'Women making their full contribution to policing', suggests that although the case has been made for equality of opportunity and promotion within the police, this has not been reflected in reality. One of the reasons cited for this is the perpetuation of dated stereotypes and myths.

Recent business research has shown that more women CEO's in the UK (77%) cite stereotypes as a barrier to women’s advancement than organisational politics, exclusion or style. (Different Culture, Similar Perceptions: Catalyst 2006)

'Taking care of others' was perceived, by both men and women, to be the most defining quality of women leaders.

'Taking charge of situations and people' was perceived to be the most defining quality of male leaders.

However empirical evidence does not indicate any significant gender differences in leadership qualities between men and women. There is therefore a gap between the perception and the reality; we suggest that we should all 'mind the gap'.

At Eve-olution we asked ourselves, was there a perception within the police that women police officers take care, while men police officers take charge? If so, how do you raise an individual's awareness of behaviours and potential blind spots which are subtle and often culturally acceptable in the workplace? We had already conducted research into the way forward for part-time and flexible working and now became involved in looking at ways of overcoming these stereotypical beliefs. We have developed an Internet based system with robust data management and secure user friendly processes. It requires only ten minutes to complete from any location, and generates a comprehensive report which forms the basis of a review.

For more details on our innovative 360º diversity assessment, please call us at Eve-olution on 0870 803 1434.

:: back to top