Our Regional Equality Networks

One of the central aims of Equality South West is to establish and support a group of Regional Equality Networks. These are age, disability, gender, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation and transgender. We wish to see effective, dynamic equality networks capable of representing their communities and influencing public policy in the region and nationally.

ESW seeks to ensure that cross-cutting themes between the networks are addressed. For example, issues affecting female older and younger people will be issues for both the gender and age networks.

It is important that each network recognises and is able to act upon the multiple layers of discrimination that can affect members of their communities.  For example, while all members of a BME community will have to deal with racism, a Black Disabled woman will have different experiences to a non-Disabled Black man.  We hope that the networks work in partnership to ensure that all equality issues are tackled.