Why do we need the New Sex Equality Laws 2008?
Posted: Tuesday, July 22, 2008
by Meera Yagnik
Temple Court Chambers
Harriet Harman published her new proposals in her Equality Act 2008, calling for positive discrimination to take place in favour of women, so that there was a fairer representation between the sexes within the work place. No doubt this caused a stir with the public, most businesses putting forward the argument that they should not be told how to run their internal recruitment policies, and, in any event there was no need for an Act as the representation between the sexes at work was equal.
(Look at the Framework for a Fairer Future- The Equality Bill as the following figures taken from here)
Why then is the case that women working part time earn nearly 40 per cent less than full time men?
Figures also suggest that 30,000 women are sacked from jobs each year for being pregnant, and that the part time pay gap is stuck at around 38 per cent.
The pay gap between men and women will not close until 2085 unless we act now.
It will take almost 100 years for people from ethnic minorities to get the same job prospects as white people.
Ms Watson from the Equal Opportunities Commission had said in 2005 that the private sector needed to take responsibility for making improvements by promoting equality and eliminating sex discrimination.
I having represented cases at the Employment Tribunal for sex discrimination claims for both private individuals and organisations who the claims were against, had, on one occasion had a client say to me that "he saw nothing wrong with a bit of touching going on at work by male work colleagues towards their female colleagues and that the sex discrimination laws took things to far and out of proportion to what had happened". He did not appreciate that sometimes unwarranted touching etc could be very demeaning and humiliating to the female at work, and, can put her in a dilemma when it comes to reporting this matter to her senior especially if a person in power is the person who has committed this act.
The above demonstrates why we need sex discrimination laws, the need to be free from prejudice and discrimination, why we need to introduce a new equality policy in the public sector and extend the scope of positive action.
The new Equalities Bill 2008 proposes to achieve this by giving The Equality and Human Rights Commission the power to conduct enquiries into public sector.
The Bill also proposes multiple ground actions to be bought at the tribunal such as someone being discriminated against because she is a black woman.
There is also the suggestion that representative actions can be bought in discrimination law to allow trade unions, the commission for equality and human rights and other bodies to take cases to court on behalf of a group of people who have been discriminated against.
Another provision which is rather interesting and in my opinion long overdue is the new proposal to streamline the duties place upon the public sector to replace the three separate duties on race, disability and gender, to also cover gender reassignment, age, sexual orientation and religion or belief.
In practice this means that the public sector has a duty to look at their specific policies and judge how this affects different disadvantaged groups in the community. In effect just new streamlined process to be considered and followed rather than the three separate duties presently imposed by the three separate acts.
The Equality Bill will also outlaw pay secrecy clauses and make it unlawful to stop employees discussing their pay.
There is also the proposal to extend positive action so that employers can take under representation into account when selecting between two equally qualified candidates.
In short the proposals in the Equalities Bill have been adopted in order to achieve more of a transparent and open procedure to protect under represented groups and educate organisations to think more on the lines of their duties to achieve a fairer deal between the sexes and to eliminate the discrimination that can take place at work by extending the powers the tribunal has to prevent similar types of discrimination occurring in the future.
Meera Yagnik
Barrister
Temple Court Chambers
m.yagnik@templecourt.co.uk
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