ABSTRACT
The legal requirement of ensuring equality between men and women’s terms of employment can currently be found in the Equal Pay Act (EPA) 1970, Art 141 (formerly Art 119) of the EC Treaty and EC Directive 75/117 (the Equal Pay Directive). However, on the 8th April 2010 the Equality Bill received Royal Assent and thus became the Equality Act 2010. The Act will replace all existing discrimination legislation and has two main aims, fi rstly to codify the complex provisions of the existing legislation and to also strengthen the law to support the progress on equality. In short, the Act replaces the Equal Pay Act 1970, the Sex Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA), The Employment Equality Regulations on religion or belief, sex orientation and age, much of the Equality Act 1996 and other ancillary pieces of legislation (see the end of the chapter for a summary of the Equality Act 2010).
