'Shaping a Fairer Future' - Women and Work Commission report
On February 27, 2006, Baroness Prosser, Chair of the UK Women and Work Commission presented the Commission's report, Shaping a Fairer Future, to the Prime Minister. The report contained 40 recommendations to close the pay and opportunity gap between men and women within a generation. The report can be downloaded from the Government Equalities Office website.
There were eleven recommendations which required a specific response from the Scottish Executive.
Scottish Government position
The then Minister for Communities wrote to Baroness Prosser to ask the Commission to consider the Scottish Government's interim response to the recommendations (published November 2006 - available on the Scottish Government website) when it reconvened. Apart from addressing the eleven recommendations requiring a response from the Scottish Government, the interim report also addressed a further twenty recommendations where we felt we had an input, either through our active participation in UK initiatives or to reflect the particular circumstances in Scotland.
A cross-directorate working group was set up in 2006 as the main vehicle for taking forward the Scottish Government's work to tackle gender stereotyping and occupational segregation - and implement the recommendations within the Commission's report.