If you feel that you have been treated unfairly or less favourably than someone else because of a protected characteristic then this could be discrimination.
The Equality Act 2010, sets out nine protected characteristics:
- age
- disability
- gender reassignment
- marriage and civil partnership
- pregnancy and maternity
- race
- religion or belief
- sex
Discrimination can happen anywhere and has many different forms. You can find more information, including examples of discrimination, from Race Council Cymru and Diverse Cymru.
Types of Discrimination
Direct discrimination
This means treating one person worse than another person because of a protected characteristic.
Examples of Direct Discrimination
- A placement opportunity becomes available. The teaching assistant believes that people’s memories get worse as they get older so he doesn’t tell one of his older students about it, because he thinks they wouldn’t be able to do the job.
- You are pregnant and applying for a promotion at work. Your employer decides not to promote you, even though you are the best candidate for the job, because they do not want to pay the increased rate for your maternity leave.
Indirect Discrimination
This can happen when an organisation puts a rule or a policy or a way of doing things in place which has a worse impact on someone with a protected characteristic than someone without one.
Examples of Indirect Discrimination
- A hairdresser refuses to employ stylists that cover their own hair, this would put any Muslim women or Sikh men who cover their hair at a disadvantage when applying for a position as a stylist.
- An employer decides to change shift patterns for staff so that they finish at 5pm instead of 3pm. Female employees with caring responsibilities could be at a disadvantage if the new shift pattern means they cannot collect their children from school or childcare.
Harassment
This means people cannot treat you in a way that violates your dignity, or creates a hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment.
Examples of Harassment
- A person who has undergone male-to-female gender reassignment is having a drink in a pub with friends and the landlord keeps calling her ‘sir’ or ‘he’ when serving drinks, despite her complaining about it.
- A university lecturer makes sexual jokes to one of his female students and implies that she will pass her exams if she sleeps with him.
Victimisation
This means people cannot treat you unfairly if you are taking action under the Equality Act (like making a complaint of discrimination), or if you are supporting someone else who is doing so.
Examples of Victimisation
- you make a complaint of sexual harassment within your course, and you are graded unfairly due to the complaint.
- Your colleague complains about being called 'wrinkly' at work. You help them complain to your manager. Your manager treats you badly as a result of getting involved.
Behaviours and standards
The University expects all members of the University community to treat each other with respect, courtesy and consideration at all times. If you have experienced unacceptable behaviour and let us know about this, we can help to address this and take the most appropriate course of action (with your consent and agreement).
This information can also be viewed on the Cardiff University Student Intranet