You may encounter sex discrimination when applying for jobs. Some employers still have stereotypical ideas about what is women's work and what is men's work - for example, assuming that a nursery nurse ought to be a woman, or that a bus driver ought to be a man. Sometimes there is an assumption that women with family responsibilities are unreliable, or that men won't want to work part-time. The objective of any recruitment process should be to find the most suitable person for the job in terms of experience, skills, aptitude and qualifications.
Sex discrimination in recruitment and selection can take several forms:
- direct sex discrimination, for example refusing to consider women for a lorry driver's job because of her sex.
- direct marriage discrimination, for example, having a policy of not employing married women.
- indirect sex discrimination, for example where an employer applies a provision that all job applicants must have been previously employed by the Armed Forces; as women have not traditionally worked in the Armed Forces in the same numbers as men, fewer women than men would be eligible to apply and so women would be put at a disadvantage.
- indirect marriage discrimination. An example of this might be a provision that applicants for promotion must be prepared to relocate to a different part of the country. As fewer married women than single women are mobile (and also, arguably, fewer married men than single men), this may be unlawful indirect marriage discrimination, unless the employer could show that mobility was a valid and necessary function of the job and was thus a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. Civil partners may also be included in any claim of marriage discrimination.
Read about your rights
Read about what the law says
For more about discrimination in recruitment and selection, see Rights in action: working and earning.