What is discrimination?

Discrimination is when someone is treated unfairly because of who they are or because of a protected characteristic such as age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnership or pregnancy and maternity.  
 

Types of discrimination 
 

Direct discrimination: Treating someone less favourably because of who they are, especially if it’s because of a protected characteristic as listed above.  
 

Discrimination by perception: This is a form of direct discrimination, and is when someone thinks you have a characteristic and treats you less favourably, regardless of whether you actually have that characteristic. 
For example if someone mistakenly thinks you are part of a religious group and treats you less favourably because of this, it would still be discrimination, even though you aren’t in that religious group. 
 

Discrimination by association: This is also a form of direct discrimination, and is when someone treats you less favourably because you have an association with someone else who has a protected characteristic. 
For example, if you are treated differently because you have family members with disabilities, this is still direct discrimination against you.  
 

Indirect discrimination: When a provision, criteria or practice is applied in the same way for everyone, but this has the effect of putting people sharing a protected characteristic at a disadvantage. It doesn’t matter if there was no intention to disadvantage that group. What matters is whether that action does disadvantage that group in some way. 
An example of this could be a dress-code or rules on appearance which might indirectly discriminate against individuals or groups of a particular religion, belief or gender. 
 

We take incidents of discrimination very seriously, and if you have experienced such behaviour you can find more information here about speaking to an advisor, reporting anonymously, and/or accessing wellbeing support.