Types of Discrimination

Discrimination can be based on any ground such as sex, race, colour, ethnic or social origin, genetic features, language, religion or belief, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority, property, birth, disability, age or sexual orientation shall be prohibited.Or in another perspective we can see discriminations in a broader sense.

Direct discrimination, in which a person is treated adversely directly on the basis of a prohibited ground. To give a basic example, it has been held to be legitimate to impose a minimum age for voting in national parliamentary elections. While this involves differential treatment on the basis of age, it has been held to have an objective and reasonable justification because of the level of maturity that the meaningful exercise of such a political right requires. Direct discrimination targets what are called visible minorities or groups. These groups include particularly women, physically disabled andminorityethnic groups.

Indirect discrimination, on the other hand, refers to a situation in which an apparently neutral provision or practice is discriminatory in its effects.One typical example of a situation involving indirect discrimination is one in which one condition for hiring an employee is the complete fluency of the official language of the country, if the carrying out of the particular occupational activity does not in itself require such fluency: the effect of the condition is to exclude from the scope of qualified candidates a disproportionate amount of immigrants.

Institutional discrimination refers to the practices or procedures in a company or an institution, or even the society as a whole,which are structured in away that tends to produce discriminatory effects. Institutional discrimination is often unintentional, but it may  also be intentional, in which case we may also use the term institutionalized discrimination.A prominent example of institutionalized discrimination used to be South Africa under the Apartheid regime.

Positive discrimination refers to such specific measures that are aimed at preventing or compensating disadvantages that are linked to grounds such as ethnicity and gender. Positive action measures aim thus at attaining full equality in practice, and overrides the basic prohibition of making distinctions between people on prohibited grounds. In India we may call it protective discrimination.For example reservation for Scheduled castes, scheduled tribes.

Out-group discrimination and in-group discrimination.Out-group discrimination refers to the discrimination that the victim faces from the society in general,while in group discrimination refers to a situation in which a person is treated adversely by one of his or her reference groups because of belonging to another vulnerable group.