2020 WBG Briefing: Equality Impact Assessments

Key Points

• Women still face structural inequality throughout their lives. Inequality based on gender intersects with other structures of inequality including class, race and disability.
• This means that policy impacts differently on women and men, and on different groups of women and men.
• Equality Impact Assessments are a way to ensure that policy makers take account of these different impacts when developing policy.
• Meaningful equality impact assessments should consider cumulative impact, intersectional impact, the impact on individuals as well as households, impact over a lifetime and the impact on unpaid care.
• They should be based on evidence and consultation with those most likely to be affected by policy.
• The Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) requires public bodies to have ‘due regard’ to equality in all aspects of their work. Equality Impact Assessments are a way to ensure public bodies have met their legal obligations under the PSED.
• Despite the obligations of the PSED, WBG has observed a pattern of poor-quality impact assessments by Government departments and, in some cases, a failure to carry out impact assessments at all.

WBG is calling on the Government to carry out and publish meaningful equality impact assessments.

View and download our full briefing here.