Profile: Kate Bennett

Equality practitioners are increasingly casting envious glances at a range of initiatives currently underway in Wales. We talk to Kate Bennett, director of EOC Wales, about how the Commission is taking advantage of the new climate brought about by devolution.

Devolution has given a significant boost to equality work in Wales. The principal reason for this is the Government of Wales Act 1998, the statute that established the National Assembly for Wales. This placed an unparalleled legal duty on the new all-Wales tier of government: "To make appropriate arrangements with a view to securing that its functions are exercised with due regard to the principle that there should be equality of opportunity for all people."

Equality of opportunity clauses were also contained in the devolution statutes in Scotland and Northern Ireland, but the Welsh equality duty is unique in its non-prescriptive phrasing and consequent all-embracing scope. It applies to all the Assembly's functions (including economic development, health, local government, social services and industry) and applies to "all people". The cross-party standing committee on Equality of Opportunity is responsible for ensuring compliance with this legal innovation.

Kate Bennett's immediate predecessor at EOC Wales, Val Feld, had a significant involvement in the Welsh Assembly's establishment and was instrumental in achieving its statutory duty to promote equality of opportunity. Bennett took up her post as EOC director in October 1999, following Feld's election to the Assembly. Tragically Val Feld died in 2001.

Bennett began her career as an industrial relations researcher before becoming a trade union official, and says that the two key themes running through her working life are pay and equality. It's therefore no surprise that she finds herself at the centre of the equality initiatives in Wales.

Mainstreaming equality

EOC Wales is working closely with the National Assembly for Wales on mainstreaming equality into every aspect of policy and practice as both employer and service deliverer. Mainstreaming seeks to identify how existing systems and structures are "male-centred" - however unintentionally and however inadvertent - and to neutralise those gender biases, as well as addressing race and disability bias.

Unlike other equal opportunity approaches that have often focused on the individual, mainstreaming seeks to integrate equality into the very systems and structures that produce disadvantage. It is a long-term strategic approach to complement, rather than substitute for, equal treatment or positive action.

Mainstreaming recognises that existing systems are geared for a dominant minority, so some men are discriminated against as well as most women. Gender mainstreaming challenges the traditional breadwinner/homemaker divide that underpins much of work organisation, collective bargaining, pay structures, taxation and welfare systems. For example, a mainstreaming approach recognises that men or women may have caring responsibilities and that work-life balance is an issue for all employees.

The EOC's independence from the Assembly enables it to offer constructive criticism and comment, while supporting policy development with research and strategic thinking. The EOC's role is to popularise and explain the mainstreaming approach and help ensure its widespread adoption. Bennett says that organisations can put equality at the centre of their work, rather than relegate it to the margins, by giving senior staff responsibility for equality instead of delegating it to a powerless working group. Such an approach would see senior management being held directly accountable for successes and failures in the area of equality, just as they would be for financial management.

The EOC's aim is for policy-making processes that automatically consider equality issues from the outset. "You can't assume that delivering a service impacts equally on all users," says Bennett, "so, for example, public transport providers in Wales need to think how it matches people's needs."

Equal pay

A practical example of the Assembly's commitment to mainstream equality is the pay review it carried out of its 3,500 staff and its subsequent action plan to address the inequalities that were found.

As a result of the review, the Assembly is committed to a three-year action plan costing 22% of its paybill in order to rectify the inequalities revealed by the pay audit. Perhaps even more significantly, it is now requiring Assembly-sponsored public bodies, such as the Welsh Development Agency and Welsh Tourist Board, to address equal pay. In a novel approach, it is also seeking to use contract compliance as a means of promoting equality of opportunity. Consultation is being carried out on a new 'best value' order that will enable local authorities, when awarding contracts, to take account of contractors' ability to deliver services to different communities and the extent to which they provide equality awareness training to staff.

Equal pay is the EOC's top priority. Following on from the EOC's Valuing Women Campaign and the report of the EOC Taskforce in 2001, on 7 March this year EOC Wales launched a Close the Pay Gap Campaign in conjunction with the National Assembly of Wales and the Wales TUC. An action plan commits the three partners to a wide range of activities, encompassing: raising awareness and understanding, ensuring employers and unions know how to implement equal pay, and tackling job segregation and the unequal impact of women's family responsibilities.

Few large private sector companies operate in Wales, so employment is predominantly within the public sector or one of 62,000 small businesses. The importance of the public sector means that the Assembly's policies on pay and employment practices for its own staff and the bodies it funds look set to have a real impact. Those civil service departments and agencies based in Wales are also important targets for developing good practice on pay, and a number, including the Patent Office and DVLA, are committed to equal pay audits.

While the Assembly's focus may be chiefly on the public sector, the EOC is equally concerned to achieve change in the private sector. For the many small enterprises that might want to examine their pay systems, but lack the HR expertise to do so, the commission is formulating a practical tool to help them in this work. The sheer number of small and medium-sized businesses means that direct contact with them all is impossible, so the EOCplans to pilot the tool with selected employers and then to publicise its benefits to achieve a wider take-up.

Bennett says the EOC is "rising to the challenge" posed by the government's rejection of the Commission's call for mandatory pay audits. The EOC's approach is to encourage both public and private sector employers to carry out pay reviews by demonstrating their benefits, as well as the implications of not doing so. "The devil is in the detail with pay," observes Bennett, "so the problems inherent in pay systems may not be apparent to employers. What we can do is endlessly to highlight the issue and make suggestions and proposals for achieving best practice." The EOC target is for half of all employers with over 500 staff to carry out a pay review by 2003 and a quarter of employers with less than 500 staff to carry one out by 2006.

European aid

The backdrop against which Welsh employers operate differs from that in the rest of the UK. Some 60% of women in Wales live below the European poverty threshold and the stereotyped nature of employment is greater. The pay gap is smaller than it is in England, but this is explained by men's lower earnings. There is more manufacturing employment per head of the population than in England and few senior management jobs, with both women and men having lower levels of economic participation in the workforce.

Wales is therefore essentially a poor country, with all areas qualifying for European structural funding, and it will receive more than £1 billion over the next six years. These European funds have acted as a catalyst to the development of gender equality measures, chiefly through stipulations that gender equality is mainstreamed in structural fund programmes and projects.

The Assembly is in overall control of European aid in Wales, although spending is overseen by a structure of partnerships - the EOC, Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) and Disability Rights Commission (DRC) sit on these as advisors. The partnerships are committed to gender balance, which is defined as "at least 40% of each gender". Bennett regards this measure as a substantial achievement, as previously, she relates, women have been badly under-represented in Welsh public life. The Commission sees its job as ensuring that economic development takes account of equality and that money is allocated accordingly. "One result should be to get more women into work, whether that's through better public transport or more extensive childcare provision," she says.

The dominance of small private sector firms in the Welsh labour market means that the EOC is keen to work with small business, and it is on the steering committee of the European-funded Welsh Development Agency Small and Medium Sized Enterprise Equality Project. This offers equality measures as a solution to business problems. For example, flexible working could be suggested as a way of overcoming recruitment difficulties. "We're anxious to demonstrate that equality can be a solution to the problems faced by business," says Bennett.

Partnership work

Partnerships lie at the heart of the EOC's work in Wales, and the Commission's project with the CRE, DRC and Welsh Language Board on an equality standard for local government illustrates this. With the Welsh Local Government Association, the partners have adapted a generic equality standard for implementation in Wales, which involves paying due regard to the use of the Welsh language as an equality factor and also stepping up the focus on pay.

"I think in Wales we've been very good at working with the CRE and DRC," says Bennett, "and the Assembly's concern with mainstreaming has also facilitated joint working." Bennett downplays the debate, however, about whether the current equality commissions should be incorporated into a single agency, merely saying that in the short term the Commission wants to work as effectively as it can with the other equality bodies. She adds that any merger is some way off, and any future equality structure will need to take account of the progress of devolution so that it is as appropriate to Wales and Scotland as it is to England.

She is disappointed that the government does not appear to be taking the opportunity to establish a consistent and strong equality framework when implementing the EU Directives. The EOC wants to see protection from discrimination in the provision of goods, facilities and services extended to the new strands of sexual orientation, age and religion, a new positive duty to promote equality, robust enforcement powers and adequate resources for all six strands.

Bennett concludes that the visible and practical focus on equality of opportunity within Welsh government offers the EOC a unique opportunity. "It's a real boost for those who want to push equality and make a difference, and the rest of the UK can learn from Wales' experience."