Why it is time to implement Section 14 of the Equality Act

Blog posts

30 Jun 2025

Dr Meenakshi Krishnan, Principal Research Fellow
Claudia Plowden Roberts, Research Fellow 

New insights from research on intersectional discrimination in the health and care sector workforce

The Office for Equality and Opportunity has launched a call for evidence on the Equality Act 2010 with the aim of strengthening its practice. This consultation looks to inform the development of the upcoming Equality (Race and Disability) Bill, alongside evidence from the recently concluded Race and Disability Pay Gap reporting consultation.

A particular focus of the current consultation is Section 14 of the Equality Act, which makes it unlawful to directly discriminate against someone because of a combination of two protected characteristics, such as race and gender, or age and disability. For example, a black woman experiencing poorer employment outcomes than black men or white women would be considered to be doubly discriminated. This is known as combined discrimination or ‘dual discrimination’. This notion of combined or dual discrimination is closely connected to the idea of ‘intersectionality’ developed by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 in her critique of feminist theory and antiracist policies in the USA, which ignored black women’s unique experiences of discrimination on account of both their gender and race.

Rather than identifying a single isolated identity category as the cause of discrimination and exclusion, intersectionality recognises the intersections of different social locations like race, gender, class, sexuality, disability, and age that interact and overlap to create multiple and interconnected forms of disadvantage. Section 14 of the Equality Act is a legal mechanism to operationalise intersectionality within UK equality law. Without Section 14, UK law only allows claims based on one protected characteristic at a time, meaning people facing discrimination and disadvantage on account of multiple combinations of their identity find it hard to get justice. The Equality law consultation is seeking input on what challenges or benefits might arise from implementing Section 14 and how common is the experience of combined discrimination in practice.

IES’ recently published research for the Care Quality Commission has identified a high prevalence of combined discrimination and intersecting inequalities in the health and adult social care sector workforce. In our employee voice survey of 646 frontline staff working in the sector, over two-thirds (68%) of respondents reported experiencing and/or observing two or more types of inequalities, highlighting a high prevalence of combined discrimination within the workforce. This experience exacerbates the level of inequality within the workforce and has subsequent negative impact on employees’ wellbeing and career opportunities.

When looking at how different inequality types combined, race or ethnicity-related inequalities were the most commonly combined with other inequalities. Specifically, it combined most frequently with inequality due to nationality, religion, gender, and mental health conditions. The combination of ethnicity and nationality-related inequalities was reported by a fifth of survey respondents, for example, the case of international migrant nurses which shows the unique disadvantages of combined discrimination. Further research is needed to understand how ethnicity intersects with migration status to impact one’s experiences at work.

Gender is another key identity factor, as over 75% of staff in the health and adult social care sector are women. The combination of gender and ethnicity is commonly discussed in literature, where women from black and ethnic minority backgrounds tend to experience higher levels of discrimination compared to white women and men from ethnic minority backgrounds. Healthcare workers with intersecting social identity markers related to race and gender experience deskilling, downward job mobility, bullying and harassment, reduced social support and increased likelihood of disciplinary action. Additionally, the intersections of gender with ethnicity and nationality also need to be researched more, as they create unique disadvantages for migrant women from ethnic minority backgrounds compared to men.

Intersectionality as a conceptual framework is widely adopted in human rights, development studies, and global health policy discourses. Yet, our research found that only half the papers we reviewed on health sector workforce inequalities adopted this lens. Adopting intersectionality as the foundational conceptual framework was crucial in allowing our research for the Care Quality Commission to surface the ways in which multiple social identity factors converge to exacerbate disadvantage. It helped reflect the real-world experiences of staff that must be acknowledged in order to advance equality, justice and inclusion within organisations. A key recommendation in our report is to encourage employers to adopt an intersectional lens when designing EDI policies, interpreting workforce data, and tackling unequal treatment at work.

Further, overwhelming evidence from our survey suggests that it is not just a case of two areas of discrimination combining that lead to inequalities in the workforce - 43% of respondents reported experiencing three or more different types of inequality. This provides a strong argument for Section 14 to be not only urgently implemented but also expanded in its focus beyond dual discrimination. Otherwise, we risk disregarding the complex and overlapping nature of multiple forms of disadvantage that affect workers.

We recently held a webinar where these findings were discussed in more detail. You can view the recording and download the slide deck here. And, to know more about how you can adopt an intersectional framework within your EDI strategy, contact Dr. Meenakshi Krishnan at meenakshi.krishnan@employment-studies.co.uk to discuss how IES can help you do so.

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Any views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Institute as a whole.