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On this International Women’s Day (IWD), we’re proud to highlight Katharina Sarter's work on socially responsible public procurement. Accounting for about one third of GDP, public procurement has increasingly become a lever for promoting equality. Katharina’s work has examined public policies and their implementation in different countries and sheds light on approaches, challenges and opportunities to lever public procurement to promote equality, fair working conditions, and more inclusive decision‑making.

Public procurement is increasingly used as a tool to promote social policy goals. Yet, while academic research takes a growing interest in the strategic use of public procurement as a policy tool, practical guidance remains rather scarce. In a (German language) contribution to the eminent in Germany, IER's Dr E.K. Sarter provides insights into possibilities and approaches of strategically leveraging public spending for goods, works, and services as a tool for promoting gender equality.

A new commissioned by the Office for Veterans’ Affairs (OVA) provides insights into the experiences of UK Armed Forces veterans from ethnic minority backgrounds. Led by IER’s Gaby Atfield, the study uncovers significant disparities in employment, housing, and social integration, highlighting key areas where tailored support is needed.

It is nearly fifty years ago that the EU passed its first directive on equal pay for equal work or work of equal value. While mobilising the female workforce has been successful in most European countries, a persistent gender pay gap remains across Europe. To address these structurally embedded gender inequalities, the EU and its Members States have recently adopted the EU’s Pay Transparency Directive (2023). Although the UK is no longer an EU Member State and is not obliged to implement this directive, it remains to be seen whether the newly appointed Labour government will follow suit and adopt similar measures as part of its intention to address the pay inequalities in its election manifesto.

The Buying Social Justice project, which comprises Prof Tessa Wright, Prof Hazel Conley, Dr Joyce Mamode and IER’s Dr Katharina Sarter, launched its toolkit for practitioners on including equality and diversity objectives within public procurement at a well-attended online event on 19 October 2023. At the event, the project team presented key findings from the two-year research project, which have fed into the guidance and good practice examples in the toolkit.

The recording of the session is now available on the . The equality and diversity toolkit is available for download from this .