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Indirect discrimination

Indirect discrimination is the legal term that describes situations when policies, practices or procedures are put in place that appear to treat everyone equally but, in practice, are less fair to those with a certain protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010.

An example of indirect discrimination, may be a minimum height requirement for a job where height is not relevant to carry out the role. Such a requirement would likely discriminate disproportionately against women (and some minority ethnic groups) as they are generally shorter than men.

As indirect discrimination is often not obvious, the University has developed an Equality Impact Assessment process, which reviews policies and their implementation, in order to avoid indirect discrimination. Additional information, advice and guidance is available from the Equality and Diversity section.