CONSIP, Italy’s national central purchasing body recently launched a pilot initiative, introducing gender pay equality scoring in competitive tendering. As EU legislation mandates pay gap reporting for employers with over 100 employees and allows contracting authorities to exclude companies with unjustified gaps above 5%, CONSIP developed a methodology for assessing bidders, combining the gender pay gap with indicators on women’s overall representation and their presence in management positions, with weighting factors to ensure fair comparisons across companies.

The pilot was tested in a consulting services tender (€9 million), with 20 offers submitted by 22 companies. All bidders ultimately provided the required data, revealing significant variation across firms. CONSIP itself achieved near full equality based on the methodology. 

CONSIP highlighted the pilot during a study visit of the Big Buyers Working Together (BBWT) Community of Practice (CoP) on Social Procurement, placing it in the broader context of its efforts to promote Socially Responsible Public Procurement (SRPP).

The main topics discussed were:

• the details of the tender and insights on future developments. Next steps include further analysis of the pilot, assessing feasibility across different markets, extending the criteria to other procurement procedures, and embedding gender equality scoring within a broader sustainability framework.
• the procurement decisions beyond cost savings (i.e. social impacts) that require robust measurement frameworks, as quantifying social value is still a challenge. These efforts are especially relevant in the evolving public procurement landscape, where geopolitical uncertainties increase the demand for public procurement to take on a more strategic role, balancing support for European industry with the principle of non-discrimination.
• CONSIP’s commitment to transparency, risk-management and co-design that engages the market through working groups and market dialogues, highlighting that CONSIP’s inclusive procurement plan seeks to enhance procurement quality, while generating social value.