Gender Equality Duty

The Equality Act 2006 amended the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 to place a statutory Gender Equality Duty on all Public Sector Organisations, when carrying out their functions, to have due regard to the need: to eliminate unlawful discrimination and harassment; and to promote equality of opportunity between men and women.  As part of the duty, public sector organisations were required from 06 April 2007 to have regard to the need to eliminate discrimination and harassment in employment and related fields and vocational training (including further and higher education), for people who intend to undergo, are undergoing or have undergone gender reassignment.

The Scottish Transgender Alliance, together with the Scottish Government Equality Unit and the Equal Opportunities Commission (prior to its amalgamation into the new Equality & Human Rights Commission), have promoted in Scotland the good practice of using the tools of the Gender Equality Duty to reduce discrimination and harassment against ALL transgender people, not just those transgender people who intend to undergo, are currently undergoing, or have previously undergone gender reassignment.

The Gender Equality Duty gave all Public Sector Organisations in Scotland a deadline for producing a Gender Equality Scheme of 29 June 2007. Amongst other things, Gender Equality Schemes have to set out an organisation’s gender equality objectives for the subsequent three years, and its plans for achieving them.  The Gender Equality Duty also requires authorities to carry out ongoing gender equality impact assessments of their policies and practices.

In its Gender Equality Duty guidance titled ‘EOC approach and criteria for GED monitoring and enforcement in Scotland’, published in May 2007, the key indicators which the Equal Opportunities Commission Scotland stated it would be looking for within Gender Equality Schemes included “consideration of specific issues for transgender people”.

Transgender people are a small percentage of the population and so statistically, Public Sector Organisations may deal with transgender employees or service users infrequently.  Despite the small numbers, however, Public Sector Organisations are under a duty to have ‘due regard’ to the need to eliminate transphobic discrimination and harassment and will need to take into account the seriousness of the discrimination or harassment, even if the number of people affected is small.  The discrimination and harassment experienced by each transgender person could be extremely severe and serious thereby making action to eliminate it a high priority.