Genuine Occupational Qualification
In UK employment discrimination law, a Genuine Occupational Qualification (or GOQ) exists when the nature of a particular job causes the sex or gender of an applicant to become a reasonable cause for choosing one applicant over another. GOQs are a special case exception to the Employment (Sex Discrimination) Act 2000, defined in Section 9 of this act.
There are eight possible types of reason for claiming a GOQ in advertising a particular job:
- Physiology or authenticity (for example, in choosing actors to play a role),
- Privacy and decency of people the employee would be dealing with (for example, staff in a care home),
- Private household's integrity (for example, professional carers for an individual, but not normally nannies),
- Single-sex accommodation, when it is unreasonable to expect the employer to provide additional accommodation,
- Single-sex establishments, for example special prisons and refuges,
- Personal welfare and counselling, when sex is directly relevant to the welfare or counselling provided,
- Jobs in foreign countries with specifically relevant laws or customs,
- When a pair of jobs are advertised specifically for a married couple.
In each of these, reasons must be specific and absolute, not based on stereotypes or generalised assumptions.
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