Equality outcomes and mainstreaming report 2023

Key Achievements At A Glance

• We have been ranked among the UK top 50 in the annual Stonewall Workplace Equality Index (WEI), having been placed 46th in their top 100 employers list this year, and ranked first of employers headquartered in Scotland.
• We are developing a Bill to end conversion practices, covering both sexual orientation and gender identity.
• We are taking a human rights-based approach to the development of the National Care Service (NCS). It will be co-designed with people who access and provide support, including unpaid carers, so that it meets their needs.
• In August 2021, we announced the award of £2.8 million in grants to refugee projects which support New Scots.
• We are continuing development of our worldleading Human Rights Bill and a consultation will be launched within the first half of 2023.
• We have increased the number of accredited Real Living Wage employers from 14 in 2014 to over 2,900 in 2022.
• Scotland has outperformed the UK as a whole on the full-time median Gender Pay Gap since 2003 and the overall median pay gap since 1997.
• Scotland’s Census 2022 included a voluntary question on trans status or history for those over 16 and will provide the first official estimate of the trans population in Scotland.
• We have reduced the Scottish Disability Employment Gap ensuring we are on course to meet the target of it being halved to 18.7 percentage points by 2038.
• In 2021, Scotland became the first country in the world to embed LGBT-inclusive education across the curriculum.
• Between April and September 2022, race equality organisations provided support to 11,138 people and 1,093 organisations, through funding provided via the Scottish Government’s Equality and Human Rights Fund.
• A Women And Girls’ Fund will be established later this year as part of a new international development Equalities Programme announced in the 2021/22 Programme for Government.
• Increasing the amount of the Scottish Child Payment – the most ambitious child poverty reduction measure in the UK – whilst also expanding it to thousands more families. From 14 November 2022 the Scottish Child Payment increased to £25 per week per eligible child and extended to all eligible 6-15 year olds.
• Scotland’s suicide prevention work is supported by the Programme for Government 2021/22 commitment to double suicide prevention annual funding to £2.8 million by the end of this parliamentary term.
• In 2022/23 we funded over £300,000 to respectme, Scotland’s anti-bullying service.
• In December 2021, we published a strategic action framework for the improvement of NHS gender identity services from 2022 until 2024.
• We are implementing the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 and published a new hate crime strategy in March 2023 which sets out our key priorities for tackling hate crime and prejudice in Scotland.
• We introduced the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill to provide a more streamlined process for trans men and women applying for legal gender recognition which was passed by the Scottish Parliament on 22 December 2022. However, The Secretary of State for Scotland has made an Order under section 35 of the Scotland Act 1998 that prevents the Presiding Officer from submitting the Bill for Royal Assent.