This summer the government found itself in a fix that had never confronted a government before. Nobody had ever tried to take a government to court over its budget, still less for a sexist budget. The Treasury is reported to have been stunned when the Fawcett Society put in an application for a judicial review of its apparent failure to honour its legal duty under the Equality Act to give "due regard" to the impact on women.
The action followed the emergency budget that proposed an initial deficit reduction strategy of tax and benefit changes. Even before the projected 500,000 public sector job cuts (mainly affecting women) were announced this week, it was clear that women would be the biggest victims.
The legal case centres on the 2006 Equality Act, which imposed a legal duty on governments and public bodies to give "due regard" to the impact on women of all their policies and services, to promote gender equality and to mitigate policies and practices that will have an adverse effect on women.
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