Following the European Union's establishment of a strategy for sustainable development in May 2001, what measures it has put in place to pr…

The power to legislate aboutsex discrimination is reserved to the Westminster Parliament. However, the ScotlandAct provided for two exceptions to this reservation under which it has been possibleto take forward work on equal opportunities in general, and gender equality in particular.
The Executive has taken a number of measures to progressthe women’s agenda in Scotland and to improve the lives of women across the range ofExecutive policy areas. For example:
o Ensuring that equality issues, including those relatingto women, are considered in the formulation and delivery of the Executive’s policy;
Passing several pieces of legislation in Scotland, e.g. Housing Act, Local Government Act, which have equality clauses;
Working with our partners, which include the Equal Opportunities Commission Scotland, Scottish Trade Union Council and others, in the Close the Gap campaign which raises awareness about the gender pay gap in Scotland
- and encourages employers and employees to take action to close it;
Ensuring Scottish input into UK initiatives and UK responses to EU Directives which are gender equality-related; e.g. the Equal Treatment Amendment Directive to make mainly technical changes to the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 to bring it up to date with more recent equality Directives and case law;
Funding organisations which support women e.g. Women Onto Work and Engender, and developing capacity in deprived areas through work on supporting women in the social economy;
Funding the Women’s Fund for Scotland to provide capacity building support in local communities;
Establishing the Scottish Women’s Convention so that women’s voices can be heard in decision-making;
Making just under £88 million available to implement the Executive’s childcare strategy for the period 2005-07, and £20 million to the Working with Families Fund for the period 2004-06 to provide affordable, accessible childcare enabling parents in deprived areas or groups to access education, training or employment (with a further £30 million being made available for 2006-08);
Providing a wide range of support to women and children experiencing domestic abuse, and
Seeking to reduce health inequalities by increasing the rate of health improvement across a range of indicators for the most deprived communities by 2008, with indicators including smoking during pregnancy and teenage pregnancy. (In addition, by setting our efforts to tackle health inequalities within the wider context of our anti-poverty Closing the Opportunity Gap work, we recognise that a real impact can be made through the inter-action of related activity streams, such as housing, employment and education, all of which focus on improving outcomes for our most deprived communities.)
Promoting equality for womencovers a wide range of issues, many of which were addressed in the Strategic Groupon Women’s report, Improving the Positionof Women in Scotland: An Agenda for Action which was published in November 2003. The report lists recommendationsto improve the lives of women in Scotland. The Executive set up and funded the group, and respondedto those recommendations earmarked for its action in March 2004. An update is duethis summer. Copies of both the report and the Executive’s response have been placedin the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe) (Bib. numbers 31673 and 36241respectively).
In addition, details of previousprogress can be found in the following publications, all of which are availablefrom SPICe:
Preliminary Report on the Equali