Anti-Male Discrimination in UK Employment

Employment Discrimination

Income
When considering ‘income’ discrimination, looking at just ‘salary’ is ‘one-dimensional’. In order to determine whether women are at a financial disadvantage in the UK, it is necessary to include ALL their income. This includes ALL the benefits and tax credits available.

a) Child Benefit (CB)
When a woman gives birth in hospital, she is given an application pack for CB. This is the first unfairness. It is presumed that she will be making the claim and has initial priority to do so. CB is paid at around #17.50 per week for the first child and #15.50 per week to all subsequent children. It is not means tested and is payable to only ONE parent per child, even Princess Diana would have received CB! It cannot be shared between two (or more) parents or carers, but MUST be paid 100% to one person, regardless how the care of the children is split. This is unfair to fathers who provide the vast majority of ‘secondary’ care for the children. If two (or more) people make claims for CB, the person who has the most ‘care’ would win. Thus a mother with 183 nights contact would have half care but get 100% of CB, the father with 182 nights contact would also have half care but get nothing.
b) Child Tax Credit (CTC)
Anyone who has children can make a claim for CTC. The claimant currently receives around #545 per year, and around #1500 per year per child. It is ‘means tested’ and slowly reduces to zero for a family combined income of around #55,000 per year. In the event of more than one claim, the Revenue would give CTC to the person claiming CB. Thus a mother with 183 nights contact would have half care but get 100% of CTC, the father with 182 nights contact would also have half care but get nothing.

c) Working Tax Credit (WTC)
WTC is payable to a parent working at least 16 hours per week or to anyone else working at least 30 hours per week. It is designed to top up low pay and begins to reduce when earnings reach #13,000 per year and is lost completely above around #18,000 per year. The rule for parents only applies to one parent. Thus a mother with 183 nights contact would have half care but get 100% of WTC, the father with 182 nights contact would also have half care but get nothing. The successful recipient of WTC also gets 75% of their child-care costs refunded (up to a relatively high maximum) as long as child-care is with a ‘registered’ child-minder. Thus two single mothers looking after each other’s children can ‘pay’ each other an additional #100 per week in theoretical child-care for doing nothing! This is one factor in how the Government has managed to ‘increase’ the number of single mothers in work! I remember a Government spokesperson claiming many years ago that ‘Governments cannot create jobs’!

d) Housing and Council Tax Benefit (HB/CTB)
In the UK, in addition to nationally collected ‘income tax and National Insurance’, we pay local taxes known as Council Tax (CT). Theoretically these are meant to go to the local authority that can be voted out if a resident is not happy with their performance. In practice, only around 25% of the local authorities budgets comes from CT, around half from business rates and the balance from central Government. CT is payable ‘per property’, with a reduction of 25% if only one adult lives there (if it is claimed). The ‘determination’ for CT purposes is based on one of five bands, dependent on the house price as at the last valuation date when CT was introduced in the mid 1990s. An ‘average’ house pays #1000 per year in an ‘average’ local authority area. This amount has been increasing year on year far more than inflation (3-5%), typically around 10% per year. People on no income and with savings of less than #3000 can claim 100% CTB and pay nothing.
Similarly with rent, HB is available for people on low incomes and particularly for tenants in ‘Social Housing’ who can receive up to 100% of their rent in HB and pay nothing. Overwhelmingly, recipients of both HB and CTB are female, specifically single mothers. They generally occupy larger premises than single men and hence the subsidy by the state is larger. There is a huge disincentive to break out of ‘benefit dependency’ since, after the first #61 per week; they lose 85p in the pound of HB and CTB for every pound they earn over this threshold.

e) Legal Aid
In order to claim ‘legal aid’, or publicly funded legal work, a claimant needs to be either earning less than #635 per month (net of income tax and national insurance and rent), or have children to support. She is allowed to earn an extra #198 per month for each child, if she is the main carer. Thus a mother with 183 nights contact would have half care but get 100% of this legal aid allowance, the father with 182 nights contact would also have half care but get nothing.
Since 1st October 2006, criminal legal aid has also been subject to means testing. Since it is overwhelmingly men who are charged with criminal offences, then it is overwhelmingly men who are now having to pay to obtain legal representation to defend themselves against false allegations, whilst the women are represented by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and do not have to pay towards the cost of the case, even if it is subsequently dropped. Prosecutions for ‘wasting Police time’ or ‘perverting the course of justice’ are rare.
f) Co-Habiting
Means testing of benefits and tax credits involves adding up the entire household income. Thus there is huge discrimination against couples that find their income combined for the purpose of calculating state support entitlement. Thus the mothers are ‘rewarded’ for ‘getting rid’ of the father, by receiving a huge increase in state support (See other article on Divorce and Separation). The Government clearly believes that you can replace a father by a huge pile of cash! Their on-going attempts to ‘lift’ millions of children out of (financial) ‘poverty’ are doomed to fail and actually result in people ‘choosing’ to stay in ‘cradle-to-grave’ benefit dependency (as single mothers) owing to the huge claw-back loss of benefits and tax credits. This further permits invasive questioning of claimant’s relationships when there is more than one adult in the household. Prior to the ‘Civil Partnerships Act 2004 coming in to force in December 2005 (legalising ‘same sex’ marriage), any man and woman sharing a property had to prove that they were NOT in a relationship – the presumption being that they were a couple unless they could prove conclusively otherwise. This perverse rule now applies to ALL adults sharing accommodation! Not surprisingly as a result of this policy, there is an acute shortage of accommodation and house prices have spiraled out of the reach of most first-time buyers.
g) Pensions
Women are allowed to claim their state retirement pension (SRP) when they retire at 60, men cannot claim until 65! This is in spite of the longer life expectancy of women (see other article on discrimination in health service provision). This is not due to be corrected until 2015-2020! Women can receive the full state pension based on five years less work than men. Women can claim ‘top-ups’ for their SRP based on their husband’s earning record (but not the other way round?). In any year that they look after children and do not work, they can claim a year’s additional pension contribution as ‘home responsibilities protection’ (HRP). Thus a mother with 183 nights contact would have half care but get 100% of this HRP, the father with 182 nights contact would also have half care but get nothing.

h) Pension Credit
Anyone over 60 can claim a pension top up known as pension credit (PC). This effectively ‘tops-up’ anyone on less than full SRP to the ‘minimum income guarantee’ (MIG) of #108 per week for a single person and #160 per week for a couple (further discrimination against co-habiting couples!). This undermines the feminist myth that somehow women receive less SRP than men (owing to not having worked as much, perhaps?). Since even though they have not paid as much income tax and national insurance over their working lives (in other words if you don’t contribute why should you receive?), they will be topped up to the same MIG. Thus a person who contributes absolutely nothing to the country in terms of income tax and national insurance by being entirely dependent on state support throughout their working lives (mainly women?) will receive the same MIG as someone who has worked hard on a low salary all their lives (mainly men?). This is entirely unfair and further discrimination against men.

i) TV Licence (TVL)
In the UK, the state run television channel (the British Broadcasting Corporation or BBC, colloquially known as ‘auntie-beeb’ for good reason) is paid for not out of advertising income, but by a nationally collected ‘television licence’. The TVL is around #150 per household for one or more colour televisions. Since 97% of households have a TV, it is easy for the licensing authorities to ‘harass’ the remaining 3%, who they presume to be breaking the law. The cost of separately collecting something that nearly everyone has must be extremely high and it makes little sense to do so. It should be paid for out of central taxation.
However, I would argue that it is unfair that men and women pay the same licence fee. If you look at the average weekly television schedules, you would struggle to find any programmes specifically targeted at male audiences, but there are huge amounts for women. As well as ‘lifestyle’ programmes in abundance (Greg Dyke, former head of the BBC, complained about ‘too many female TV producers producing too many female lifestyle programmes’, and I agree), there are dozens of ‘soaps’, which mainly appeal to women (Coronation Street, Neighbours, Eastenders, Brookside etc). The handful of sports and motoring programmes come nowhere near justifying equal licence fee for men.
When I cancelled my Sky subscription and was asked why, I pointed out the above. I said that it was clear that men having to pay additional subscriptions for premium sports channels were subsidizing the 100s of female-oriented channels and that this was unfair. Needless to say, I have scrapped my TV and recommend that all men do the same. I was asked by BBC News 24 to appear on a programme about prejudice in reporting after I made a similar comment on one of their chat sites. The original intention was for me to travel to London and sit in on the training that reporters went through in attempting to report fairly. I would then discuss my thoughts with the head of BBC News, Helen Boaden, who was looking forward to meeting me. This was all arranged and I was sent train tickets. Two days before the appointment, my contact rang me and asked in which particular area of discrimination was I interested, and I mentioned gender discrimination. He indicated that this would be mentioned, but would only form part of the programme. The next day, I got a phone call from him saying that Helen Boaden did not want to meet me now – and I said ‘case proven, milud!’ and he agreed! Instead he decided to bring a cameraman to my town and make the whole programme on gender discrimination in news-reporting, and this is what happened. I did warn him that he may lose his job as a result, but he was not concerned. I have not heard from him since and the BBC’s anti-male news prejudice has become even more blatant.
The same argument applies to all forms of paid media – newspapers and magazines, for example. Pick up any of these and count the number of negative misrepresentations of male stereotypes and positive misrepresentations of female stereotypes and you can see why I don’t buy any of them, and recommend that all men save their money as well. (This may be the subject of a separate article).

j) ‘Illegal’ income
It is interesting to compare the discriminatory treatment of ‘illegal’ activities that normally fall along gender lines
- Alcohol is generally agreed to be ‘bad’ for your health, particularly if you consume more than 21 units a week (for men, 14 for women – not discrimination but related to the smaller average physical size of women). Until recently, it was overwhelmingly men who drank too much. Rather than attempting to reduce demand for alcohol, (banning it did not work in America in the 1920s!), the Government has increased the tax on alcohol – hence men are paying more for their addiction. There is an extreme shortage of places on ‘drying-out’ courses. It is only recently with the huge increase in the number of women ‘binge’ drinking that the Government has belatedly decided to try and tackle the problem.
- Cigarettes – These are generally considered to be bad for your health and this has been known for about 50 years! It is only now that more women are smoking than men that the Government has decided to ban smoking in public places (in 2007). This increase in women smoking and dying from the habit has had the result that, for the first time in recent history, women’s life expectancy is actually reducing. The feminists are to be congratulated for encouraging women’s independence and they celebrate their ‘release’ by doing all the bad things that men have been doing for years, like smoking and drinking. Interestingly, a reducing number of men are smoking and dying of the habit, so the gap in life expectancy is closing.
- Gambling – when I have visited betting shops (in the interests of market research!), 99% of the ******rs are male. The Government has (therefore?) decided to increase the availability and acceptability of gambling (national lottery, licensed casinos) to ensure that the additional tax on men’s spending goes into the Government coffers.
- Driving – In the UK we have two main taxes on driving – the Road Fund Licence (RFL) and Fuel Duty (FD). The RFL has traditionally been a flat-rate per vehicle, but the Government has recently tried to ‘reward’ what they perceive as ‘low-polluting’ vehicles (women’s?) by a reduction in RFL.
FD is a surcharge on petrol and diesel along with VAT making up more than half the total price paid (tax on tax). Clearly, men (on average) drive more miles than women and hence pay far more FD than women.
There are two other indirect ‘taxes’ on driving – ‘speed’ cameras and road pricing/congestion charging. ‘Speed’ cameras are automatic revenue earners placed on the road allegedly to deter speeding vehicles. In most cases (in my experience) they are located in absurd places (between traffic lights in towns, or on congested roads where you can only break the speed limit at 3am!). Nevertheless they are perceived as huge fee earners and I assume it is mainly from men, who are more likely to speed. If the Government REALLY wanted to control speed (rather than indirectly raise revenue), it would be very easy to fit speed limiters in all vehicles (rather than just in lorries). If the speed limit signs controlled the speed limiters then it would not be possible to speed anywhere.
There are currently proposals to introduce road pricing (‘toll roads’) on motorways. This would disproportionately penalise men who make up the majority of high mileage drivers. Congestion charging is another ‘fund-raiser’ that the Government is considering, ostensibly for pseudo-environmental reasons. They want a ‘black-box’ in everybody’s car, monitored by satellites, to ensure that users of busy roads pay more for the ‘privilege’ – again mainly men would pay. Town-centre congestion charging makes far more sense, but is less likely to be introduced, as it is mainly women who drive in towns (on the school-run).
- Prostitution – It is interesting to contrast the treatment of (overwhelmingly) female prostitutes with the above. Rather than legalising prostitution (as in some other European countries, most notably Holland), the UK Government has decided to (pretend to) keep it technically illegal (see recent article on a brothel prosecution, where the prostitutes were not prosecuted as they were ‘vulnerable’ women!) and therefore the women can earn large amounts of additional cash TAX-FREE (!), without affecting their state support or requiring them to contribute towards Government expenditure! This is further discrimination. Additionally, the (female) ‘street-walker’ is left alone, but the (male) ‘kerb-crawler’ is prosecuted! Who is inciting whom to break the law?
- Drugs – Apparently around half of crime is drug-related – addicts stealing to fund their habit. Since family breakdown is the number one cause of homelessness and the homeless men (disproportionately) are extremely vulnerable to drugs, I suspect that it is mainly men who are addicted. This is probably why the Government has decided not to invest in more ‘treatment’ centres. There have been experiments in providing free drugs to addicts on condition they sign up for treatment and these have been very successful (Liverpool for example). It is obvious that if there was no market in the drugs, if they were provided on prescription that the need to steal to fund the habit would stop.
- Suicide – It is also likely to be true that having become addicted to any of the above, that a lonely addicted man has no motivation to break out of the cycle of dependency until he has a lifestyle change. The obvious change that most men want is a stable relationship with a loving supportive and caring woman. As feminism is teaching women that they should not be any of these things, the supply of suitable partners is declining. Thus the number of suicides is increasing. According to Bob Geldof, Christmas Day is the number one day for suicides – presumably owing to the emphasis on friends and family at Christmas making lonely people more aware of their loneliness – and father’s day is the number two day – presumably making fathers denied contact more aware of their absence of their children. Since in every country in the world (except China) men commit suicide more than women, it is not a Government priority.
The alternative way forward is through mentoring. A man who has broken out of the dependency cycle is unlikely to be able to get a conventional job, when competing with normal healthy conviction-free applicants. However, he is in an ideal position to act as ‘mentor’ or ‘befriender’ for other men going through the problems. If Government funding for mentoring were widespread, then there would be a reward for breaking out of the cycle of dependency and a chance to help others. This ‘spread-out’ of support could rapidly help hundreds of men and should be a cornerstone of any real policy for tackling addiction. Needless to say, as it is mainly men in this position, the Government is not interested, preferring to spend billions on predominantly female social workers to ‘paper over’ the cracks and simply deal with the symptoms.
k) Miscellaneous
In addition to the above, qualifying parents (i.e. mothers) can claim free prescriptions, eye tests, dental check ups, school meals, help with the Child Trust Fund and an allowance for a 16-18 year old who stays on at school (EMA). The other parent gets nothing. Then there is the ‘child’ support agency (More correctly entitled the ‘mother’ support agency or collector of the ‘fathers tax’), see other article on this subject. Thus a mother with 183 nights contact would have half care but get 100% of these ‘passported’ benefits, the father with 182 nights contact would also have half care but get nothing, and have to pay half the CSA assessment as well!

l) Summary
In conclusion, women receive on average far more ‘income’ than men in the same circumstances, when combining salary with state support as identified above. It is clear from the above that ‘possession’ of the children is the key factor. This is why I describe the current system as ‘Winner takes all’. A mother with 183 nights contact would have half care but get 100% of these benefits associated with having children, the father with 182 nights contact would also have half care but get nothing. It is absurd to claim discrimination against women in ‘salary’ when there is so much discrimination against fathers in all the state benefits! Thus it is fair to say that, overall, men pay far more in taxes and women receive far more in state support. This is unfair and discriminatory.

Pregnancy

Obviously (at present) men cannot get pregnant and give birth to babies. This biological ‘advantage’ that women uniquely have, has been used as a basis to ‘justify’ discrimination in this area. In fact, it has been specifically stated that men cannot challenge laws relating to pregnancy on the grounds of discrimination! Why not? I am going to summarise the discrimination against men relating to pregnancy.

a) A woman cannot be dismissed in connection with her pregnancy. If an employer does do so, or can be shown directly or indirectly to have included her pregnancy as a factor, he would be subject to a heavy penalty in damages at an Employment Tribunal (ET).
This has led to a series of absurd cases, the most extreme of which related to an employer who hired a woman on a short-term contract to cover another woman who was off on maternity leave. Within a day or two of starting, the second woman declared she was pregnant, so the employer dismissed her and was fined heavily at ET.
b) A pregnant woman can claim unfair dismissal in the above case from her first day of employment, whilst a man has to be employed for 12 months to qualify to claim for ‘unfair dismissal’ (UD). Dismissal on the grounds of pregnancy is ‘automatically unfair’. The significance of this is related to the damages awarded at ET. Damages for UD are significantly higher than for the alternative – ‘wrongful dismissal’ –, which is limited to the notice pay, typically a week’s salary for employment of less than 12 months.
c) A pregnant woman can choose her ‘pregnancy leave’ (PL) and her job must be kept open for the whole time, on the off chance she chooses to return. She is allowed to take six months break (soon to be 12 months) from around the ‘expected date of delivery’ and is only required to give one month’s notice (or whatever her normal contractual notice period is) of whether she intends to return or not. Her original job must be kept for her as far as possible. If there is reorganization whilst she is on PL, she must be treated equally in any determination of redundancy and her pregnancy must not be used as a factor, not the time off on PL or any sick leave related to it, (which can be huge) as a factor in determining reliability of employees.
d) A woman on PL must be paid ‘Statutory Maternity Pay’ (SMP). SMP is the lower of 90% of her normal weekly salary or around 95 per week. She must receive any bonuses or salary increases that other staff receive during the period of her PL, even though she has not helped the firm during that period. Clearly, the remaining (male?) staff would have to work harder to cover for her absence, as a temp is unlikely to completely fill the gap.
e) The father can ask for ‘paternity leave’, but he is only entitled to take two weeks! He would be paid the same as SMP. The proposals for extending time off for PL to twelve months include the option, if the mother agrees, to transfer up to three months to the father, not to be taken at the same time.
f) Any parent of children up to 6 years of age can make a request to her employer for ‘family friendly’ working (FFW). The employer has a duty to ‘reasonably consider’ the request. It is not (yet) a requirement to grant FFW requests. Recent news coverage indicates that women are more likely to be granted FFW than men.
g) For the sake of completion, there is one regulation relating to birth, which is equally applicable – under EU regulations, both parents can take up to three months unpaid leave in connection with their children.

‘Positive’ discrimination
There is much talk about the perceived ‘discrimination’ in employment because there are so few female Company directors or MP’s. In Britain, the ruling Labour Party passed a law legalizing ‘all-women shortlists’ for MP’s. I resigned from the Labour party as a result of the imposition of an all-women shortlist in my local constituency for a local Council election. I argued, and was supported by my constituency, that since we already had three female City Councillors, a female County Councillor and a female MP, if anything we needed an all-male shortlist! (I believe that all forms of quotas are unfair and discriminatory) Needless to say I was over-ruled by the regional committee. Interestingly, what had been a safe Labour seat for the entire 32 years since the last boundary reorganisation, was then lost to the opposition! Similarly in South Wales, one of the safest Labour seats in the country with a 20,000+ majority had a female candidate imposed from outside and the likely male candidate (Mr Law) stood as an independent, overturned the enormous Labour majority and won by a landslide! Even the anti-male ‘Auntie Beeb’ commented on this!
There is no such thing as ‘positive’ discrimination – it is still discrimination. The feminists claim there is discrimination in the candidate selection process, yet have never produced any evidence or successful ET claims to demonstrate it exists. Since 55% of people who actually vote are male (According to the polling organisation, YouGov), men are clearly more interested in politics than women (personal experience of friends would support this). What probably happens is that 80% of people coming forward are male, which is why 80% of prospective candidates are male. This would be very easy to demonstrate if any political party was interested in fairness (which they are not). I would propose that all initial applications should exclude any references to age, gender or nationality. A short-list of all candidates that met the minimum requirements could be drawn up and then filtered down to the three best candidates based on their CV’s. Only at that stage would they be invited in for interview. A national analysis of age, gender and nationality could then be made of the short-listed candidates and then compared with an equivalent analysis of those candidates who were actually selected. Only if the percentages in each category were significantly different could arguments of discrimination be supported.
In fact, the feminists have undermined their ‘aim’ of 50% representation by their actions in the Welsh Assembly where already around half of representatives are female. Any reasonable person (which excludes most feminists!) would assume that having achieved parity that the ‘all-women shortlist legislation’ would be dropped. Not so for the Welsh feminists who clearly want to achieve 100% female representatives and are still using the discriminatory legislation in recent selections!
In Scandinavia, they have gone even further by passing an absurd law requiring all companies to have 50% female directors! Clearly, there are a huge number of ‘token’ women in place. This does a huge dis-service to the small number of high calibre women who have achieved their high positions through merit, but are perceived to have achieved it simply because they are the ‘token’ women.
The present British Government Cabinet (the inner circle that controls Britain) is staffed with a number of incompetent women who are only there because they are women and not on merit. Similarly, Lady Hale, the only female Law Lord (part of the House of Lords – the highest law court in the UK) allegedly was a law lecturer! The male Lords had to have a minimum of 20 years practicing as a barrister to get to be a High Court Judge, let alone to reach the House of Lords! The plans for future selection of Judges have involved the Government selecting candidates for a panel known as the ‘Judicial Appointments Committee (JAC). The JAC will be responsible for selecting Judges and will have a requirement to select 50% female Judges, regardless of whether there are sufficient suitably qualified and experienced women available. Since two-thirds of practicing lawyers are male (but only one third of trainees), this is unfair and discriminatory and unlikely to improve the standing, reputation or fairness of judgments of Judges in the future!
A couple of years ago the Law Society (the Governing body restricting access to who becomes a solicitor) appointed its first female Chief Executive. She reached the top quicker than any male had ever achieved in the organisations 200 year history, and then tried to claim she became Chief on merit and not because she was a woman!
Interestingly, the Labour Party constitution states that each regional committee must have two ‘equalities officers’, one of who must be a woman. When I stood for the position and was out-voted, we ended up with two women in the positions! When I pointed out that this was unfair, I was told to (try and!) change the party’s constitution! I got the same answer when I queried the fact that there was a ‘women’s sub-committee’ but no men’s sub-committee! The Labour Party (in Government) has a Minister for women and children, but no Minister for men!

Minimum Wage Legislation (MWL)
Interestingly, in the 1920s, a local authority tried to introduce MWL to its staff and the men complained to Court and won! The judge’s conclusions make interesting reading! (references to ‘feminist policies’, for example). Nobody has challenged them this time round, although obviously women have benefited the most since they are more likely to be on the lower pay-rates. Presumably men have suffered as a result, by an erosion of pay differentials between MWL staff and those slightly above or acting as supervisors.

Job Requirements
One of the more absurd areas of discrimination concerns areas of the job description, which may reflect negatively on women. A woman wanted to become a fireman and complained that the requirement to be strong enough to carry a 20-stone man down a ladder was indirectly discriminatory against women, as fewer women would be able to do so. She won! As a result, lives are at risk if an 8-stone female fireman turns up to rescue you trapped in an upstairs room! As a result of further cases, the equipment stores had to be expensively refitted so that the shelves were lower for (tiny handful of) shorter female firemen to be able to reach. As a result of having to bend over further to pick up their equipment, more male firemen are having back trouble and taking huge amounts of sick leave! Surely this was a case where discrimination was justified?
Similarly in the armed forces – poor feeble women were moaning that the training was too tough and more of them were getting injured in the practice! When on active service, disproportionately women are retained to do the ‘safe’ jobs back at base meaning more men get killed on active service than women. I am waiting for a feminist’s family to sue the military after she died in action saying it was unfair and discriminatory that she got killed and that the military should have done more to protect her!
Why has nobody challenged the airlines on the same basis? Since the rows of seats in aeroplanes are too close together to be comfortable for tall people and disproportionately men are taller, it is indirectly discriminatory against men!

Sexual Harassment (SH)
One of the many difficulties employers face in employing women is in the area of inter-personal relationships, specifically ‘harassment’.
Interestingly, the criminal law in this area (Prevention of Harassment Act) requires the victim to show they have been subjected to two or more incidents of a similar type in a short time to show a course of action amounting to harassment. For example, sending threatening texts, making silent phone calls, stalking or verbal abuse has been shown to constitute harassment and result in criminal charges. As with most areas of law where women claim to be predominantly the victims, the law has become ‘subjective’. Traditionally, the Court would take the view, when faced with an allegation, ‘what would the reasonable man think?’ This became known as ‘the man on the Clapham omnibus’ test as a theoretical typical person. This meant that the test was ‘objective’, in other words based on rational determination. This has now changed to be subjective, in other words, no longer what would an objective and reasonable person believe, but what would the victim believe. Thus the operation of the law was up to the female victim. If she believed she was a victim, regardless of how absurd that could be perceived, then the Court has to respect that view.
At work, SH can be proved from just one incident! One of the leading cases concerns a female candidate at an interview. She claimed that the male interviewer was ‘getting turned on’ by the interview and made a claim of SH to the ET. The Tribunal ruled that as a ‘matter of fact’ (i.e. the result of their determination on this specific issue) the male interviewed ‘did not get turned on’, but that this was irrelevant since it was what the victim believed that mattered!
It is clear that the law in this area operates in a discriminatory way. Female employees have successfully claimed to have been sexually harassed when they have had their bottom pinched by a male employee, by displaying a ‘girlie’ calendar on the wall of the office, by looking at ‘****’ on the office computer and by sending sexually suggestive jokes by email. You can prove there was discrimination by reversing the genders in those incidents and see how quickly you would be laughed out of Court if you tried to bring a case!
I would argue that the first test of whether SH had occurred would be to reverse the genders. If there were still a case then there would be grounds to proceed. Otherwise it should also be laughed out of Court, but, as we know, that is not what happens.

Summary
Employers traditionally paid women less than men for reasons, which are still valid, although illegal
– Women do not normally want to put their work before their family and are less likely to sacrifice time with their family to help at work.
– Women are less career oriented or motivated to get to the top
- Women take more time off for family issues
- Women take more time off sick
- Women take time off having babies and the job must be kept open for an unspecified time on the off chance the woman chooses to return
- Women are more likely to make spurious claims of sexual harassment and hence male staff are more ‘on edge’ in their dealings with female co-workers than if there was an all-male staff, increasing their stress levels
- Women are more likely to demand part-time and flexible working requiring men to cover the unsocial hours
- Women won’t do the ‘heavy’ work, requiring a man to risk his back in moving heavy objects
- Women are less likely to want to join in ‘bonding’ sessions in the pub at lunch-time
- Women spend more time ‘gossiping’?
- Women are less able to focus on a specific task. As a result, 99% of inventions and innovations in history have been by men. They are better able to multi-task, hence traditionally preferring the low-paid, ‘low-skilled’ jobs such as receptionist, carer and nurse

For all these reasons, any employer that employs women (particularly of child-bearing age) needs to have his head examined! But you are not allowed to say this in Britain!

Tags: discrimination, employment, gender, human rights, maternity, men, paternity, unequal pay, unfairness, women