Do You Respect Other People?

ll people are supposedly born free and with equal rights. However, there can be political, religious or social discrimination, because all people are not the same. It does not matter for the discrimination if it is a man or woman, the language which that person uses or the culture. It is impossible to judge people because they are poor or rich, or because they are old or young.

What does discrimination mean?

Discrimination is when people are limited in some actions, because of their religion, skin colour, their financial standing or similar.

How can we see it?

Discrimination exists but it can sometimes be difficult to see because many people simply do not wish to see it.

Although discrimination is a complex issue, it is possible to break it down into small parts and address these parts individually. This is an important step in overcoming it.

The forms of discrimination

1. Direct discrimination

Direct discrimination is when you’re treated differently and worse than someone else for reasons such as age, sex, race, religion, disability etc.

2. Indirect discrimination

Indirect discrimination is when there’s a practice, policy or rule which applies to everyone in the same way, but it has a worse effect on some people than others.

The practice, policy or rule applies to a certain group of people in the same way regardless of who they are. For example, you could have a rule that all employees in a shop must work on Saturdays. This is a neutral rule which affects everyone in the shop. However, if you are Jewish and observe the Sabbath, you can’t work on Saturdays. So this rule, although fair for most people, has some indirect discrimination to those who cannot work on Saturdays due to their religion.

Examples of discrimination

Here are some examples of discrimination, which will give you a better opportunity to see it.

Imagine you see a job advertisement for a female masseuse. However, the ad states the applicant must be under 35 years of age. This is discrimination as there is no reason why a woman of 40 years of age cannot do this same job, especially if she has the same skills or experience.

Also, there is no reason why a man cannot do this job, if he is a specialist in this sphere. He might even have a lot of experience, but he will not be accepted for this position.

This is an example of direct discrimination, where we can see the discrimination because of age and sex. There is also the indirect type of discrimination and it is shown in this example.

Another example: imagine that the pupils, that are learning at school, will have some excursion and because of it, the teacher asks the pupils to visit the doctor, who should write that they are healthy and can travel. But at the same time all people understand, that the children with any special needs may not be healthy and because of it, they cannot go on the excursion with the rest of the pupils. But really, they can take part in these activities on the same level as the other pupils.

Gender and age discrimination

Let’s look at an example of age and gender discrimination. Imagine a young woman who works in a company where all the other employees are male and mostly older than her. During her first three months, she constantly hears from her managers and co-workers that she is too young to know how to work properly, that because she is a woman she should only be preparing coffee and copying documents as this is work easy enough for a woman to do. In this case we can clearly see that the managers and bosses do not want to see the potential of this young woman or her professional skills, simply because she is a young female.

It was exactly because of this type of attitude that feminism was born. Women wanted and still want the same rights as males and to be viewed as equals.

How to overcome the discrimination?

First of all, the government should control all spheres of society and to make sure that there is no discrimination for people. Also, if there is shown to be discrimination, it is necessary to check the situation and there should be some punishment for those that are discriminating against others. All in all, the greatest step will be the worldwide community that wants to decrease discrimination.

We need to always be humanistic and recognise that we are all different and yet all capable in different ways, therefore we must respect each other and appreciate our differences. It is vital that we stamp out discrimination no matter what form it takes.