UK Anti-Discrimination Legislation
A Failure to Tackle Multiple Discrimination Has Led to Disadvantage
The failure of UK law to adequately address the issue of multiple discrimination has had a threefold adverse affect on claimants.
It can be argued that the current anti-discrimination legislation that exists in the UK does not adequately recognise the issue of multiple discrimination and, until it does so, many claimants will be unable to seek redress for the disadvantage they have suffered.
The Problem of the Most Disadvantaged
Although the concept of multiplicity is not limited to those from minorities, the pervasive nature of discrimination (whether it is due to race, sex, disability, etc) in society means that these groups are most likely to suffer if the problem of multiple discrimination is not adequately addressed. In her essay in Feminist Legal Theory: Foundations, Kimberley Crenshaw suggests that the current failure to tackle the issue of multiple discrimination has produced a "single axis framework" that has a triple affect on claimants.
The Triple Affect
The first affect stems from the assumption that all individuals within a particular group (e.g. all women or all disabled people) share a common experience of adverse treatment. Such an assumption fails to acknowledge that the discrimination that people suffer (for example that suffered by Asian women as opposed to that suffered by Asian men) can be quantatively different and so must necessarily be treated differently. The current legislative presumption is that one remedy fits all but in reality, a rule to tackle sex discrimination could well lead to great improvements for white women whilst at the same time not having such an impact for black women.
The second problematic affect of the "single axis framework" is the isolating of each ground of discrimination from any other, according to Nitya Iyer this effectively assumes that "it is possible and appropriate in the context of redressing relations of inequality to consider the social characteristic of each [ground] in isolation". Therefore, anti-discrimination statutes are inadequate to deal with cases where claimants rightly feel that they have suffered due to an indivisible combination of discriminations (e.g. race and sex).
The third and final affect ties in with the second and relates to structural disadvantage, according to Sandra Fredman in her book ,Women and the Law, is ignoring "the powerful institutional forces which drive so many women into low paying, low status jobs and which obstruct the career paths of many others". By taking this approach to gender disadvantage, the varieties and causes of disadvantages suffered specifically by ethnic minority women are overlooked. If the law does not recognise discrimination suffered by certain specific groups then nothing can be done to remedy the situation they find themselves in.
An Unsatisfactory Situation
Having examined the threefold affect that Crenshaw's "single axis framework" has on claimants, it is clear that the current form of anti-discrimination legislation in the UK is inadequate and, if it remains unchanged, then claims of multiple discrimination will not be able to be successfully made and so justice will continue to allude some claimants.
