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Section 8 Equality Act 2010 seems to define the protected characteristic as solely applying to people who in fact are married or partnered, but my impression was that one could not be lawfully discriminated against either for being married or for being unmarried. Reading the provision makes me question this. Am I missing something? What gives?

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  • The state is in favour of marriage (and civil partnership), and so provides benefits and protections that it does not provide to single people
    – Henry
    Jul 29 at 22:46
  • Interesting. My interpretation though perhaps equally speculative is rather that it is more targeted at preventing people from hiring people on the basis that they’re single for the purpose of wishing to leverage their superior position as an employer to seduce them. I used to know someone who would share with me of their various unsuccessful schemes to try to hire female interns for the partial purpose of trying to sleep with them but they (IMO rather predictably) never got anywhere with it. I would have thought that this is designed to prevent this sort of thing, of hiring people for their.
    – Seeking answers
    Jul 29 at 22:52
  • Sex appeal and/or availability
    – Seeking answers
    Jul 29 at 22:53

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It is. Part 2 Chapter 1 Section 8 specifically says "People who are not married or civil partners do not have this characteristic."

In practical terms, a claim for unlawful dismissal would not have to rely on this Act or this Characteristic. Many company handbooks refer to avoiding discrimination on "marital status", so the claim could be made that the company had acted against policy. Not as strong as national law, but likely to succeed in absence of other factors. Single people who were expected to cover shifts that people with a family consistently avoided could argue constructive dismissal on "making unreasonable changes to working patterns or place of work without agreement" grounds. And cases of sexual harassment are as likely to refer to Sections 11 or 12 of the Act as to Section 8.

There appears to be some interest in this - north of the border if not in England and Wales - and perhaps less jurisdictionally in Bella De Paulo's article for Psychology Today, which concludes "All serious forms of prejudice and discrimination go through a similar process of going unrecognized, then getting dismissed and belittled once people start pointing them out, and in the best cases, eventually getting taken seriously. Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that when she was first appointed to the Supreme Court, the other judges did not think gender discrimination existed. ..."

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