Discrimination Law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Discrimination Law - Essay Example Sex inequality issues in the United Kingdom By assigning the recognition of â€Å"protected characteristic† to sex as a criterion for maintaining equality in the United Kingdom, the Equality Act 2010 complicates issues in several ways. The history of inequality with regard to sex in the UK has spanned decades, and still evolving. It is such a complex matter that could not be easily rectified through the mere reform of the UK discrimination law. The following examples demonstrate why sex inequality is such an endemic crime in the United Kingdom. Though progress has been recorded recently in every facet of UK public life, however, the society is still largely dominated by males (Coveney et al., 1984). There are reports of gender inequality in education all across the UK (Riddell and Salisbury, 1999). 2 Male dominance has become ingrained into the UK society that it seems it is just the natural thing to do. It is a known fact that discriminating against women in terms of educatio n (as it was done many years before) has a far-reaching impact on the womenfolk. First, it makes women to be unequal with men in knowledge acquisition and subsequently turns them into unqualified people. This trend had made it impossible to find women who were as qualified as men to take up challenging positions in both private and public offices. Although things have changed drastically in this modern dispensation, but there are still disheartening reports that sex discrimination is still a viable problem in UK labour practices (Perlman and Pike, 1994). Employers look down on women and consider men for jobs based on different reasons. It is believed that most women do not maintain continuity in their jobs because of other responsibilities that include marriage, children-bearing and other domestic concerns; men, on the other hand, are regarded as strong and more professionally minded. Using these reasons to discriminate against women is not appropriate, but employers are mainly conc erned about the success of their businesses. If they are eventually employed, women still face serious issues of discrimination in their workplaces. There are indications that some UK companies offer better pensions and insurance benefits for their male workers than those given to their female employees (Perlman and Pike, 1994). Similarly, wages for male and female workers are not the same, even though they do the same amount of job at their respective workplaces. This 3 preferential treatment of male workers over female workers stems from the fact that United Kingdom’s industries were founded with a focus on males as the viable workforce (Mosley et al., 2002). And this perception has not changed much in this modern day as employers still dismissed female workers because of flimsy excuses like dating a fellow worker or getting pregnant during the peak work period (FL Memo Ltd., 2005). An interesting case to illustrate the tediousness of the male versus female tension in UK la bour markets is Webb v EMO Air Cargo (UK) Ltd, where Ms Webb was seeking claims for unfair dismissal based on her pregnancy. Those she was chastised for using the argument that if male workers could be allowed to treat themselves when they fell sick, why shouldn’t a pregnant woman be allowed to go for child-rearing; her employer (Air Cargo (UK) Ltd was criticised for firing her based on pregnancy, an action that was illegal and contravened the United Kingdom labour law (Collins et al., 2005). This