Glossary of terms

Care economy: Work that is concerned with caring for people, including domestic provisioning of food, clothing and shelter.

Discrimination: Unfair treatment of a person, racial group or minority. Direct discrimination occurs when a person is treated less favourably than others due to their sex, race, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, marital status etc. Indirect discrimination occurs when a rule, condition or requirement which applies equally to everyone has an adverse effect on one person from one of these categories, and there is no objective explanation for this.

Equal opportunities: The absence or removal of barriers to economic, social and political participation on the grounds of difference, for example due to a person's gender, race or disability.

Gender: The social and cultural differences between men and women learned from society, families and cultures. Gender differences can change over time and between cultures. For example, while only women can give birth (biological), biology does not decide how children are brought up (gendered behaviour). See Sex below.

Gender analysis: Gender analysis examines the roles and responsibilities of women and men and explores the relationships between them, known as gender relations. It then asks the questions: Who has power? Who holds resources? Who benefits?

Gender budgeting: Applying gender mainstreaming to the budgetary process. Gender budgeting involves examining budgetary outcomes, to see how budgetary allocations affect the social and economic opportunities of men and women.

Gender disaggregated data: Also referred to as 'sex-disaggregated data', this is the collection and separation of statistics and data (e.g. education, employment figures) by sex in order to see the different figures for men and women and make comparisons between them. It builds up a profile of gender needs in an area.

Gender duty: The gender equality duty for public bodies will come into force in April 2007and will be effective in England, Scotland and Wales. It will require public authorities to work towards promoting gender equality and eliminating sex discrimination. The different needs of women and men will have to be taken into consideration by service providers and public sector employers when designing employment and services. Public bodies will be required to set their own gender equality goals in consultation with their service users and employers.

Gender equality: Means that the behaviour, aspirations and needs of women and men are equally valued and met.

Gender Mainstreaming: This is the integration of gender into everyday policy making, management and service delivery. It is a long-term strategy that frames policies and practice in terms of the realities of people's lives and aims to reform and change organisational culture and structures in accordance with this.

Indirect discrimination: This is concerned with practices that appear on the surface to be neutral between men and women because they are applied equally to both men and women. However, when the effect or impact of the practice is assessed, the practice is shown to be more disadvantageous to one sex. (Definition from the Equal Opportunities Commission.)

Sex: The biological difference between men and women.