Today, a new dawn breaks for the men who suffer sexual discrimination at the hands of public authorities across the UK. The Gender Equality Duty (GED) has become law and is enforceable.
The GED is the biggest change in sex equality legislation since the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act and gives powers to men to challenge public bodies from government departments to local authorities about any gender discrimination they suffer from those authorties.
The difference between the SDA and the GED is that public authorities have to be proactive rather than passive in stopping sexual discrimination in the provision of their services. Complaints about sexual discrimination are to be made and enforced by the Equal Opportunities Commission and when that organisation is disbanded, the powers go to the new Commission of Equality and Human Rights.
Full briefing papers and information are available from the Equal Opportunities Commission at their web-site (link)
The GED places a statutory duty on all public authorities when carrying out their functions, to have due regard to the need:
- to eliminate unlawful discrimination and harassment;
- to promote equality of opportunity between men and women.
Some of the areas that men are discriminated against and can take advantage of the GED are:-
Domestic Violence
Currently 24% of DV victims are men, yet there are only four refuges in the UK as opposed to over 470 for women. Local authorities have ignored supporting male victims. Now they have a duty to collect statistics in their area and provide bespoke services/refuges. If they don't, they break the GED. This also affects the government who every year spend £50 million+ on supporting female victims but practically nothing for men.
Employment
Men are severely under-represented in the areas of education and social services. Not only in working in the central local authority teams but also in terms of primary school teachers and social services care workers. Again, most local education authorities are not interested in recruiting men to these areas (the lack of male teachers who can act as male role models in primary schools is one source of boys under-performance at school as well). They now have a duty to pro-actively look at finding ways to recruit more men to these areas.
Education
The under-performance of boys is a serious area of concern (see this site's education section) with boys being 7-8 years behind girls when it comes to examination results (GCSE's). Local authorities have a duty now to seriously look at solving this problem. Of course some girls may need the same help, which is fine of course, but local authorities can no longer sit on their hands.
Health
On issues such as prostate and testicular cancer where research funding and services provided by bodies such as the NHS are woeful, have to be addressed. If any man is not receiving the treatment he needs because he is a man, then the relevant organisation has to be pro-active in finding these areas and meeting the need.
Women-Only
Many councils and government bodies provide women-only facilities or services. Many of which would break the SDA anyway, however, the GED gives far more teeth to allow challenges which are unlawful Such unlawful schemes include women-only training (where a man would benefit) or women-only services such as women-only swimming sessions.
Women-only Departments
Many councils and even the government have women and equality departments, the GED should put pressure on them to widen the brief or scrap the departments.
The way that some public authorities will weasel out of commitments will be over their interpretation of due regard, proportionality and relevance. It is important to take this into account when making any complaints. So for example, asking for the same money to be spent on male DV victims as women DV victims would fall foul of this. However, the fact that practically all local authorities spend no money and that some money and service provision (24% of what is spent on female victims?) must be spent would be relevant for a complaint.
Good luck to all those discriminated men in using these powers. They are there to be used.
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