Equality duty: mainstreaming report 2023-2025

Our Mainstreaming approach

The Scottish Government is deeply committed to advancing equality across all areas of its work. This commitment is organisation-wide and aims to ensure these principles are fully embedded in every aspect of our decision-making, policy development, and service delivery. By mainstreaming equality, we strive to create a culture where these values are an integral part of how we operate and where they drive meaningful and lasting change.

While the responsibility for ensuring that equality and human rights is properly embedded in policy decisions sits with individual policy owners across government, we have established a dedicated Mainstreaming Unit within the Directorate for Equality, Inclusion, and Human Rights (DEIHR). The Mainstreaming Unit plays a pivotal role in advancing our mainstreaming objectives. Its responsibilities include producing reports such as this one, providing expert advice and resources, and supporting teams across the organisation to better integrate equality and human rights considerations into their work. The Unit also works collaboratively across Scottish Government to promote best practices and ensure consistency in our approach to mainstreaming.

The Mainstreaming Unit undertakes a broad range of activities to support and embed equality throughout the Scottish Government.

Mainstreaming allows the team of specialists who work in DEIHR to have an impact far beyond what we can do through direct policy work and engagement by providing support, challenge, systems and processes, and capability building.

To achieve this, we are delivering a programme of mainstreaming activity within a structured framework focused on:

• Strengthening Leadership
• Developing accountability and transparency
• Ensuring effective regulatory and policy environment
• Using evidence and experience
• Enhancing capability and culture
• Improving capacity.

This framework is the centrepiece of the Mainstreaming Equality and Human Rights Strategy, due to be published later in the year. A consultation on that strategy closed on 5 February and the responses to that are now being considered.

Enhancing Capability

Recognising the importance of building capability on equality and human rights and the specific role of continuous learning, the Directorate for Equality, Inclusion and Human Rights delivers a range of training aimed at improving understanding and implementation of mainstreaming principles. These training programmes cover topics such as conducting Equality Impact Assessments (EQIAs), understanding protected characteristics, and applying a human rights-based approach to policy and service design.

Complementing this, the Diversity and Inclusion team, run an EQIA improvement programme for employer-based activity. This is a series of workshops combining real-time tailored advice during EQIA development and peer support.

In February 2025, the Directorate for Equality, Inclusion, and Human Rights (EIHR) hosted the first equality and human rights development week aimed at improving organisational competence and capability in equality, inclusion and human rights. Over the week, 17 topic sessions were held and attended by staff from across the Scottish Government. This serves as a platform for building collective understanding and commitment to mainstreaming.

By equipping staff with the necessary knowledge and skills, we ensure that mainstreaming becomes embedded in every aspect of our work.

Through these concerted efforts, the Scottish Government demonstrates its continuing commitment to advancing equality, its organisation and the services it delivers to the people of Scotland.

Inclusive Culture and Learning

Recognising the importance of investing in our capacity and capability to effect positive change, the Diversity and Inclusion Team deliver a diversity and inclusion curriculum.

It offers digital and live learning opportunities which cover all equality groups and offers learning for specific roles ranging from recruitment panel members to staff diversity network leaders.

In 2022 mandatory inclusive culture learning was introduced for all staff. This was coupled with the opportunity to participate in topic-specific learning central to our approach to advancing equality and inclusion in our workplace. This includes anti-racist, social model of disability and allyship approaches.

New to the curriculum is our series of animated storytelling products. This takes a co-production approach to giving staff’s lived experiences a voice, including animations on our Employee Passport, Islam Awareness and Neurodiversity.

Our curriculum has grown to more than 100 learning resources. By equipping staff with the knowledge and skills they need, the diversity and inclusion curriculum aims to improve understanding and implementation of inclusive practice and decision-making at all levels of our organisation.

Our Progress since 2023

As part of our commitment to embedding equality across the Scottish Government, we have included in this report a series of case studies to spotlight on key areas of work that have successfully mainstreamed equalities, demonstrating tangible progress and meaningful impact.

By showcasing initiatives that have directly benefited individuals, we aim to illustrate how policy and practice can drive positive change, fostering a more inclusive and equitable Scotland.

Scottish Government staff diversity data is published quarterly, with a more detailed exploration published annually. The annual publication presents diversity and inclusion experiences as measures against employer outcomes. Data in this report is presented internally, more frequently to help measure impact of our Diversity and Inclusion Employer Strategy.