Disabled people report high levels of harassment worldwide, often based on intersectional characteristics such as race, gender and age. However, while #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter have highlighted ongoing experiences of sexual and racial harassment, disability harassment has received little attention.
This book focuses on legal measures to combat disability harassment at work. It sets disability harassment in its international context, including its human rights framework, and confronts the lack of empirical information by evaluating the Irish legal framework in practice.
It explores the capacity of the law to address intersectional harassment, particularly that faced by disabled women, and outlines the barriers to effective legal solutions.
4.1 Introduction This chapter outlines the social and legal context for disability harassment in Ireland. Ireland is a member of the EU; as such, it is bound by EU law, including the FED, making it a suitable comparator for other EU member states or for states with an EU legal legacy, such as the UK. It has also ratified the CRPD, making its experience relevant to the many jurisdictions that have ratified that convention. Ireland’s legislative provisions on disability harassment are comprehensive and, in most respects, exemplify compliance with both the
Legal professionals are thought to have higher levels of mental health issues and lower levels of wellbeing than the general population.
Drawing on qualitative data from new research with legal practitioners, this in-depth study of mental health and wellbeing in the UK and Republic of Ireland’s legal sector is a timely contribution to the urgent international debate on these issues.
The authors present a comprehensive discussion of the cultural, structural and other causes of legal professionals’ compromised wellbeing. They explore the everyday demands and difficulties of the legal working environment and consider the impacts on individuals, the legal profession and wider society.
Making comparisons with systems overseas, this is an invaluable resource that provides evidence-based suggestions for swift and effective organisational and policy-related interventions in the legal sector.
Most workers on temporary, zero hours and involuntary part-time contracts in the UK are women. Many are also carers. Yet employment law tends to exclude such women from family-friendly rights.
Drawing on interviews with women in precarious work, this book exposes the everyday problems that these workers face balancing work and care. It argues for stronger and more extensive rights that address precarious workers’ distinctive experiences.
Introducing complex legal issues in an accessible way, this crucial text exposes the failures of family-friendly rights and explains how to grant these women effective rights in the wake of COVID-19.
The effects of COVID-19 are visited disproportionately on the already disadvantaged.
This important text maps out ways in which those already disadvantaged have been affected by legal responses to COVID-19. Contributors tackle issues including virtual trials, adult social care, racism, tax and spending, education and more. They reflect on the implications of COVID-19 and express concerns with policy and practice developments and with the neutral version of the law and the economy which has taken root.
Drawing on diverse resources, this text offers an account of the damage caused by legal responses to the pandemic and demonstrates how the future response can be positive and productive.
disability faced in trying to break into the profession and the need to work long hours to “prove your worth”. In the Dublin focus group, the severe impact of the recession on the solicitors’ profession in the Republic of Ireland was emphasized too: ‘… for younger solicitors I’d imagine it made you feel kind of disposable … you come back into it when things start getting better and everyone’s on 12-month contracts all of a sudden because there are no permanent jobs anymore … You go to try and get a mortgage and you’re told you can’t. “Oh, you’ve a great job but you can
mental health specialists. It may well also be that there are lessons to be learnt from other professions, such as medical practitioners, who arguably have a richer previous engagement with the role of affect and emotion in the workplace (Samra and Jones, 2019 ). There is also a need to acknowledge and explore the intersectionality involved in wellbeing issues, for example whether, and if so to what extent, wellbeing issues vary between people of different genders or ethnic backgrounds or with different disabilities (Brown and Maloney, 2019 ). Even within the legal
connected to the relationship between the person providing and the person ‘receiving’ care. For example, providing care for an adult relative with a mental health problem might involve helping them to secure housing through liaising with mental health services and a housing association, as well as more daily routines of keeping in touch. The women who gave interviews for this study had six broad types of caring obligation, which often overlapped. These were: care for a child without disabilities; care for a child with a disability; care for an adult with a disability
, an agency care worker based in Liverpool, whose daughter had a disability requiring round the clock care. Sharon went for what she understood was a job interview with a care agency and mentioned at the interview that she would need to take a week away from work in the summer because her daughter had a hospital appointment in London. She brought the hospital letter with her as proof. The agency manager told her it would not be a problem, but when she came back from the week away, she was told her services were no longer required. In summary, then, it is clear that
their own parents in care for their children. Some felt it would not be fair. For example, Sandy’s mother had died and her father had a disability. She said that even if her parents were fit and able to do it, she did not think that it would be fair to involve them because there should be other arrangements possible. Other interviewees had recently relied on their parents for help with care but now found their parents were too infirm. Bettina’s mother had helped with the care of her two sons, who had now left home. However, as she had just been diagnosed with
