why single parents need to be a protected characteristic

Did you know that in Britain in 2021 it’s illegal for employers to discriminate against married people, but if you’re single you’re fair game?

This *may* have made sense when married people were potentially considered to be less flexible given responsibilities at home and therefore faced unfair treatment in the workplace. But what of now when there are 2.9 million single parents, 90% are female and almost 70% are in paid work outside the home? Isn’t it likely that if a married person may be viewed negatively by an employer, so too would a single parent – if not more so?

We don’t need to second guess it though. Stories abound of unfair treatment of single parents at the hands of employers. And it doesn’t stop there. Single parents face unequal treatment in child benefit and tax free childcare calculations, they are overcharged for holidays and more recently in lockdown they were barred from some shops. Our own research has found up to 80% of single parents face discrimination.

Single parents have been overlooked throughout the Coronavirus pandemic just as they are in normal times. This isn’t restricted to the government alone. Single parents are also overlooked by society and the media more broadly. When the easing of lockdown started and people were allowed to meet with one other person outside, single parents were expressly told, but not you. Once the government started to listen and introduced support bubbles for single parents which we campaigned for, the BBC reported on it the next day without incorporating calls from any single parents and listeners lamented their exclusion from the rule, claiming they were like single parents. Ignoring the reality that they were free to form a support bubble, it just had to be with another single person/ single parent.

The Equality Act 2010 provides a legal framework to protect individual rights and ensure people are treated equally. It lists nine groups – known as protected characteristics – which are afforded this legal protection. These protected characteristics are: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. The Act covers discrimination for these groups which occurs – in the workplace, in any educational institution, when using any public services, as a consumer, when buying or renting property, and as a member or guest of a private club or association.  

Single parents must be enshrined as a protected group in the Equality Act 2010 to ensure single parents stop falling through the cracks. Only once single parents are a recognised group in law, will we be actively considered by the government and all British institutions as policies are developed, and not merely remembered as an afterthought. Crucially too, by recognising single parents as a group with specific needs, maybe society as a whole will begin to understand our reality a little better. 

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For more examples of discrimination towards single parents please see this article in Forbes.