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Sex discrimination: Woman's offence at pin-ups not related to her sex

This report relates to 1 case(s)

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    Stewart v Cleveland Guest (Engineering) Ltd [1994] IRLR 440 EAT (1 other report)

    • Pin-ups not discriminatory

      Date:
      1 September 1994

      In Stewart v Cleveland Guest (Engineering) Ltd (23 June 1994) EOR57D, the EAT dismisses an appeal against an industrial tribunal's finding that it was not sex discrimination to require a woman to work in a workplace in which male employees were allowed to display pictures of nude women, even though the employers knew that this was offensive to her, because a hypothetical man might also have objected to the pin-ups.

In Stewart v Cleveland Guest (Engineering) Ltd, the EAT upholds an industrial tribunal's decision that a woman who was deeply upset and offended by pictures of naked women being displayed in her male-dominated workplace, and whose complaints were trivialised by her employer, was not subjected to unlawful sex discrimination. The EAT finds no error of law or perversity in the tribunal's conclusions that, although the complainant was subjected to a detriment, this was not on the ground of her sex because the material in question was "neutral" and was no more offensive to a woman than it would have been to a man; and that a man who complained about such material would have met with the same negative response as the complainant received.