European Social Fund in England

Gender equality and equal opportunities

Gender equalities and equal opportunities is a regulatory cross-cutting theme for all structural fund programmes in 2007-2013.

The new ESF programme in England has a dual approach to mainstreaming gender equality and equal opportunities. Firstly, it will ensure that equality of opportunity is taken into consideration and actively promoted by providers when they deliver their services. The procurement and contract management processes organised by Co-financing Organisations will play an important role in ensuring this integration takes place. Secondly, ESF will to be used to fund equality-specific providers or projects where this is appropriate to do so (including on a sub-contracting basis where a Co-financing Organisation is funding a prime-contractor).

At national level, gender equality and equal opportunities will be fully integrated across the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation stages of the programme. A new equal opportunities sub-committee will be set up to advise the national ESF programme monitoring committee on equality issues. The terms of reference for the group should be agreed in the autumn 2007 and will be made available on this website.

One of the first tasks for the sub-committee will be to prepare a national mainstreaming action plan for the 2007-2013 programme and to set up reporting arrangements so that regions can report on the progress they are making towards mainstreaming gender equality and equal opportunities. The mainstreaming strategy for the new programme should be available on the website by spring 2008.

Good practice guidance on: disability, gender, race and age, drawing upon case studies and experience from EQUAL and Objective 3 projects is already available on this website.

Finally, the new programme will promote good practice through the introduction of a new national ESF award scheme for providers and partners who 'go the extra mile' in promoting gender equality and equal opportunities. More information about this will be available on this website in 2008.