It is nearly fifty years ago that the EU passed its first directive on equal pay for equal work or work of equal value. While mobilising the female workforce has been successful in most European countries, a persistent gender pay gap remains across Europe. To address these structurally embedded gender inequalities, the EU and its Members States have recently adopted the EU’s Pay Transparency Directive (2023). Although the UK is no longer an EU Member State and is not obliged to implement this directive, it remains to be seen whether the newly appointed Labour government will follow suit and adopt similar measures as part of its intention to address the pay inequalities in its election manifesto.

The Buying Social Justice project, which comprises Prof Tessa Wright, Prof Hazel Conley, Dr Joyce Mamode and IER’s Dr Katharina Sarter, launched its toolkit for practitioners on including equality and diversity objectives within public procurement at a well-attended online event on 19 October 2023. At the event, the project team presented key findings from the two-year research project, which have fed into the guidance and good practice examples in the toolkit.

The recording of the session is now available on the project website. The equality and diversity toolkit is available for download from this project website.

First findings of the research project ’Buying social justice through procurement' of which IER's Dr Eva Katharina Sarter is a Co-Investigator, have been presented at the Fifth Fairness at Work Conference in Manchester in January.

Focussing on Scotland and Wales, the presentation comparatively explored the place of gender and race equality in the ‘Fair Work’ agendas in these two countries.