Gender Network at Homes England

The Homes England Gender Network was established to help ensure that Homes England achieves gender equality through the development of our policy and procedures relating to the working lives of women and men at the agency and through the empowerment of women by way of shared experiences, opportunities and knowledge.

The Homes England Gender Network was established in June 2017 having started life as the ‘Women’s Network’. In October 2017 it changed its name to the ‘Gender Network’ to reflect its membership base and its aim to help Homes England achieve gender equality.

The networks aims are to:

• provide a channel of communication between members of the Network and points of decision making within the agency on issues that are of importance to the network, which also supports the objectives of Homes England
• provide a safe space in which to share experiences, opportunities, ideas and concerns
• offer a place of mutual support to all women from across the agency
• establish working groups to explore issues and recommend changes to enhance policy and practice within the agency
• raise awareness and provide a forum for the discussion on gender equality issues, both within the network and the wider agency community

The network currently has over 100 members and its membership continues to grow. As with all of our networks, the Gender Network is open to all staff, not just women, and continue to encourage membership from as wide a range of staff as possible and from across all levels of seniority.

The network has been busy during the last year working on a wide range of issues that affect gender equality within the agency (particularly around training and mentoring) and helping to inform how Homes England can influence our partners in our expectations of them as equitable and inclusive organisations. Most recently the network played its part in the development of the Homes England Gender Pay Gap Report by providing members’ views of the actions that the agency will be taking to tackle its gender pay gap. Going forward the network will continue to help the agency with the development of those actions and will help in the monitoring of progress towards the removal of the gap.