What is discrimination?
Discrimination is when someone is treated worse than another person. Discriminating against someone because of something to do with their background or identity can be unlawful.
The reasons why people discriminate against others is often complex and can come from:
- Prejudice
- Bias
- Negative stereotypes
- Lack of understanding, awareness, diversity, or integration.
Discrimination can happen because of people’s negative, prejudiced, and harmful attitudes, behaviours, and actions towards others. It can also happen because it is built into the policies, practices, and systems that we create in the societies we live in (systemic discrimination) and the organisations where we work (institutional discrimination).
To eliminate discrimination, we need to challenge prejudice and promote understanding. We need to be curious about learning about people and encourage the development of ideas and attitudes. The best way to understand more about people is to listen to people and their experiences, while acknowledging that no two people’s experiences are the same.
The Equality Act 2010 is the legislation in Britain that provides us all with protection from discrimination connected to one or more protected characteristics. Everyone has at least one protected characteristic. These characteristics are protected because we know people experience prejudice and discrimination because of them and this is often the cause of the deep-rooted inequalities we see in society. People can have more than one protected characteristic and we use the term ‘Intersectionality’ to help us understand how people’s identities result in unique combinations that can result in discrimination and privilege. The National Autism Implementation Team created a short film to raise awareness of intersectionality
Age
When we talk about age, we mean how old someone is or the age group they are in. This can mean people of the same age or of a range of ages, for example people ‘over 60.’
Disability
When we talk about disability, we mean a physical or mental impairment that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities.
Gender Reassignment
When we talk about gender reassignment, we mean when a person is proposing to undergo, undergoing or has undergone a process to reassign their sex.
Pregnancy and Maternity
When we talk about pregnancy and maternity, we mean when someone is, or has been pregnant, has given birth or is breastfeeding.
Race
When we talk about race, we mean a person’s colour, nationality (including citizenship), or their ethnic or national origins.
Religion or Belief
When we talk about religion, we mean any religion and a lack of religion.
Sex
When we talk about sex, we mean being either male or female. It can mean a group of people like men or boys, or women or girls.
Sexual orientation
When we talk about sexual orientation we mean sexual identity, attraction, and behaviour. Human sexuality is a wide spectrum ranging from exclusively heterosexual, through varieties of bisexuality to exclusively gay.
