The Good, the Not So Good and the Ugly: Gender Equality, Equal Pay and Austerity in English Local Government

Conley, Hazel; Page, Margaret

Abstract

© The Author(s) 2018. Drawing on theories of responsive and reflexive legislation and gender mainstreaming, this article examines the implementation of the gender equality duty and the Single Status Agreement in five English local authorities between 2008 and 2010. Both of these initiatives coincided with the global financial crisis. The data highlights how organizational restructuring following budget cuts resulted in the separation of these two important initiatives between equality and human resource management teams, preventing the duty from reaching the high expectations of the Equal Opportunities Commission and the Women and Work Commission. The reliance on equal pay legislation and the failure to use the gender equality duty missed an opportunity to move away from adversarial forms of legislation and towards more responsive forms of regulation of pay equality.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 20, 2017
• Online Publication Date: May 22, 2018
• Publication Date: Aug 1, 2018
• Deposit Date: Jan 3, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 3, 2018
• Journal: Work, Employment and Society
• Print ISSN: 0950-0170
• Electronic ISSN: 1469-8722
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 32
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 789-805
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017018768207
• Keywords: gender equality duty, equal pay, local government
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/867920
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017018768207
• Additional Information: Additional Information : Copyright(c)2018 Reprinted by permission of SAGE publications.
• Contract Date: Jan 3, 2018