This occurs where the effect of certain requirements, conditions or practices imposed by an employer has an adverse impact disproportionally on one group or other.
This is a less obvious form of discrimination.
An Employment Tribunal will look at 3 factors.
1. The amount of people from a racial group or of one sex that can meet the job criteria is considerably smaller than the rest of the population.
2. The criteria cannot actually be justified by the employer as a real requirement of the job. So a candidate who cannot meet the criteria could still do the job as well as anyone else.
3. Because the person cannot comply with these criteria they have actually suffered in some way because of it. This seems obvious, but a person cannot complain unless they have lost out in some way.
With Indirect Discrimination an employer can argue that there may be discrimination, but that it is actually required for the job, (this is known as a "geniune occupational requirement" (GOR)).
This does not happen very often, but circumstances where it might occur are, for example, actors who are needed to play certain characters for authenticity. The same can be true for restaurants, for example an Indian restaurant will want Indian staff rather than white staff.
Or where race or gender is a genuine occupational qualification for the job, for example, employing women in an all female hostel.
