Abstract
This research aims at elaborating on exploring the extent of the UK discrimination legislations and how they help prevent or promote gender discrimination. With this research the need to understand the objective behind the formation of various legislations and amendments is elicited because they are the foundation on which this paper is written. These issues are covered in the literature review which acknowledges most of the acts and the years when they were enacted, the reasons for their enactment and the fundamental assumptions that led to their formulation. Concisely the UK discrimination legislation was stipulated in the constitution and other bills so as to facilitate the attainment of equitable gender employment opportunities as well as eliminate disparities that were experienced in the wage rates. It is important therefore to note that the government of the United Kingdom has been vital in the institution of legislations against various types of discrimination among them being gender stereotypes, gender discrimination, disabled women and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGB&T) discriminations (Osawa, 2010). The last section of the paper presents findings and whereby the rationale for these findings is driven by the need to elucidate the attitude and views of the people in a bid to understand the dynamics underplaying the modern UK’s workplaces.
In an empirical research structured to explore the extent of gender discrimination in UK and how the government has been used legislative tools enacted in the constitution to empower the people, 1200 open ended questionnaires were distributed randomly to potential correspondents between the age groups of 18 and 55 years. This age group represents the working population in the public sector who expressed their attitude towards gender discrimination at their places of work. The respondent’s attitudes characterized a complex integration of social and structural factors that have been instrumental in undermining the functioning of the UK discrimination acts and their amendments. The demographic variables in the research results associated employment to be majorly discriminative on the gender roles. These views accounted for 50% of the responses which supports the findings made regarding the place of women in the modern workplaces and how such factors affect or determine other resultant factors such as pay determination and customer satisfaction indices. From the findings on the exploration of discrimination, it is concise that there exists a cordial relationship between attitude and perception of the respondents towards the UK legislative amendments relating to discrimination (Abrams and Houston, 2006). Women and more so those with disabilities and working in the public sector were the most affected as compared to their male counterparts working in the same professions for a relatively similar work hours.
The balance between wages or income and educational curriculum came in handy in explaining the feelings and attitude exhibited by the people. Generally it was acknowledged that men have a higher income as compared to women whereas the factor of education is relative in the sense that men who have done technical subjects according to the school curriculum are more advantaged than their female counterparts (Rigg, 2007). Apparently the interaction between people of different classes also determined the acceptance level of people with disabilities in the UK. This is because the findings correlate to the fact that educated people have a biasness of attitude towards women and people with disabilities in general.
References
Abrams, D & Houston, D 2006, Equality Diversity and Prejudice in Britain: Results from the 2005 National Survey
Osawa, M 2010, Workplace Flexibility (Christensen, K & Schneider, B, Ed.), Flexible employment and the introduction of work-life balance programs in Japan, 303–316. Cornell University Press: Ithaca
Rigg, J 2007, Disabling Attitudes? Public Perspectives on Disabled People, in Ed Park, British Social Attitudes: The 23rd Report
