Psychologists are calling for social class to be made a protected characteristic to tackle widening inequalities and make levelling up a reality across the UK. A person’s social class should be given the same legal protections as the nine characteristics covered by the 2010 Equality Act, such as age or race, the British Psychological Society (BPS) said.
The current law protects people from discrimination on the basis of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. However, potential discrimination on the basis of income, accent, education, or family background is not covered.
The body said adding class would “create an immediate and clear legal mandate for initiatives to reduce class-based discrimination”. This could lead to a medium to long term reduction in exclusion and discrimination, which could result in improved education, health and work outcomes and a reduction in psychological damage.
And it said “huge strides” could be made if institutions were required to record data on class and class-based disparities. The Government said it would not be making changes to the Equality Act at this time.
A report by the BPS, published on Wednesday, examined the negative impacts of class-based discrimination across the areas of education, work and health. It found lower social class is associated with poor mental health due to chronic stress, educational and employment barriers and insecure housing.
Working class people experience “judgment and blame” when accessing medical treatment, it found, while children worry that their behaviour may confirm others’ negative stereotypes about “people like them”, which interferes with learning. One of the report’s authors, Dr Bridgette Rickett, called the Government’s levelling up ambitions “admirable and urgent”, and said one step to make this a reality would be to protect social class under equality legislation.
She said: “In the UK, discrimination based on someone’s social class or socioeconomic status is immune from direct challenge and for too long the damaging impacts of social class inequalities and discrimination have been ignored. The psychological evidence in our report is clear; class-based differentials in structural, economic, environmental and material conditions are hugely significant for health and wellbeing across all areas of people’s lives.
“We have focused on the areas of education, health and work as we believe these are areas where class based discrimination is rife, and areas where huge strides could be made if institutions were obliged to record data on class, analyse class-based disparities and implement policies and initiatives to tackle discrimination.”
An Equality Hub spokesman said: “The Government is determined to open up opportunities to everyone, no matter their class, ethnicity or background. That is why we appointed Katharine Birbalsingh as the chair of the Social Mobility Commission, giving this vital issue a renewed impetus.
“We will not be making any changes to the Equality Act at this time.”
