Gender discrimination law

Gender Equality Duty

General Duty

The Equality Act 2006 amends the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 to place a statutory duty on the council, when carrying out all its functions, to have due regard to the need to:

• eliminate unlawful gender discrimination and harassment 
• promote equality of opportunity between women and men

This is known as the 'general duty' and comes into effect on 6 April 2007. It applies to all the council's functions - policy making, service delivery, employment and to services and functions that are contracted out to other organisations and companies.

Transgender

The Duty also requires the council to eliminate unlawful discrimination and harassment against transsexual people in the fields of employment and vocational training.

Specific Duty

To support the delivery of the general duty there are also a series of specific duties. These are:

• prepare and publish a gender equality scheme, which sets out gender equality objectives by no later than 30 April 2007
• consider the need to include objectives to address the causes of any gender pay gap 
• gather and use information on how the council's policies and practices affect gender equality in employment and service delivery - for instance, do women and men use services in different ways, do they have different needs from a service? 
• consult stakeholders in determining the objectives 
• assess the impact of current and proposed policies and practices (equalities impact assessments) 
• implement the actions in the scheme and monitor annually 
• review the scheme every three years

The Sex Discrimination Act (SDA) 1975 and the Equal Pay Act (EPA) 1975

The SDA makes it unlawful to discriminate on the grounds of sex. Specifically, sex discrimination is not allowed in employment, education, advertising or when providing housing, goods, services or facilities. It is unlawful to discriminate because someone is married, in employment or advertisements for jobs. It is also unlawful to discriminate in the employment field on the grounds of gender reassignment, or pregnancy and maternity. Harassment in employment, vocational training and further education is also specifically prohibited. The EPA says women must be paid the same as men when they are doing equal work and vice-versa.

Direct Sex Discrimination

It is direct sex discrimination to treat a person less favourably on grounds of their sex than someone of the other sex would be treated in the same circumstances.

Indirect Sex Discrimination

Indirect sex discrimination is where a condition or practice is applied to both sexes but it adversely affects a considerably larger proportion of one sex than the other, and it is not justifiable irrespective of sex, to apply that condition or practice.  This would apply particularly to employers advertising for a new member of staff.

The Sex Discrimination (Gender Reassignment) Regulations 1999

The Sex Discrimination (Gender Reassignment) Regulations 1999 amended the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 (SDA) with effect from 1 May 1999, making it unlawful to discriminate on grounds of gender reassignment in employment and vocational training. There are, however, no express provisions  prohibiting discrimination on grounds of gender reassignment in the other fields covered by the SDA. However, there is a good argument that the general definition of sex discrimination prohibits this, although there is not yet any legal authority on this point.