During The Last Century A Great Deal Of Legislation Was Passed To Prot

During the last century a great deal of legislation was passed to " protect women"On the on-going fight for improvement of women as employees. Improvements involved the effect of restricting their hours of work, their opportunities to engage night work, and the types of work they were legally permitted to undertake. The purpose of such provision was to provide opportunities for women, and to decrease the level of discrimination. Discrimination can occur in a number of ways e.g. in the essence of a person who is badly treated, but in regards to this assignment ower main categories will be Women who are mistreated over there gender rather than they're physical abilities. To prevent and remedy these problems the Sex Discrimination Act was set out as part of a legal package with certain objectives even though they are rather mixed. The specific aims of the package were set out a consultative document and later on in a white paper. The main purpose of such a white paper was to set and make anti-discrimination legislation necessary, however this was not adequate enough to achieve the necessary equality for men and women The papers main functions of the anti-legislation was to reduce the friction between men and women; the white paper provides, " the adverse treatment of someone on the grounds irrelevant to that person intrinsic qualities and qualification; to reduce pressures of prejudices, custom and conformity which lead to such differential treatment; to provide remedies for the victim of unfair discrimination and indirectly to change prejudiced attitudes expressed as discrimination." The Equal Opportunities Commission which (abbreviated to EOC) is the body which deals with the complaints of discrimination, but however the matter can be addressed to Industrial Tribunals for employment maters or can be referred to the civil courts, if wished by applicant. It should be pointed out at this particular stage of the assignment that this legislation is not solely for the purpose of perpetuating women's problems. Its main priority is with sex discrimination, which not only covers women but discrimination against men. It should be also noted at this stage that there are two types of discrimination, firstly that of "direct" and secondly of "indirect". Most claims of indirect unlawful discrimination involves an allegation of that the aggrieved person has been refused a job, or not been promoted, or dismissed because of their race or gender. Direct discrimination occurs where a woman is treated less favourably then a man on grounds of her sex, this was seen in the case of Birmingham City Council v Equal Opportunities Commission 1989. In this case selective single sex education was provided in grammar school for about 5% of Birmingham children ? such selections were based on examination results. However there were more spaces available for boys than girls and girls also required a higher pass rate than that of the boys. The EOC succeeded in the contention that this constituted unlawful discrimination. Many key sex discrimination cases have arisen where national courts have referred the matter to the European Court of Justice Art 177 of the EC treatyFor clarification of EC law. Such cases, from whichever member of they state they originate, become precedent, which all-English courts are bound by to apply. The second way the in which EC law develops is through the procedure under Art 169, this Article enables the European Commission to bring a Member State before the European Court alleging failure to comply with the treaty obligation. There are a number of cases which the United Kingdom has been found wanting under this provision. The most important one under the sex equality area is that of Commission of the European Communities v United Kingdom which held that the existing British equal pay law failed to comply with Art 119 and the Equal Pay Directive had no provision for a women to allege that her work was of equal value to that of a man. A finding of the breach under this procedure does not automatically change domestic law, but both the political pressures and the likelihood of such a claim based on Francovich and others v Italian State Cases 1992, are likely to bring about such changes. In this instance the law was changed by the Equal Pay Amendments Regulation 1983. One of the main consequences of the history and