Women’s Policy Group NI Responds to Consultation on Addressing Age Discrimination in Goods, Facilities, and Services
June 2025 – The Women’s Policy Group (WPG) NI has submitted a comprehensive response to the recent consultation on addressing age discrimination in goods, facilities, and services. This response underscores the WPG's commitment to promoting gender equality and challenging systemic injustice through an intersectional feminist lens.
The WPG welcomes this bill as it addresses a significant gap in equality legislation. Extending protections against age discrimination to goods, facilities and services is a necessary step. The WPG strongly recommends that protections be extended to people of all ages.
It is important that age discrimination - and all types of discrimination - are understood from a gendered perspective. This means understanding that depending on one’s gender identity, individuals will experience discrimination in different ways. Understanding age discrimination through a gendered lens helps to embed a degree of intersectionality into equality analysis, as it allows for an understanding of how multiple factors influence how discrimination is experienced. For example, although age might be the primary reason for the discrimination, the nature of discrimination someone experiences will differ depending on that person’s gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, disability and other factors. This approach is consistent with a gender budgeting approach, which means understanding the equality impacts of budgets through a gender lens.
The WPG views this as an overwhelmingly positive piece of legislation. We would like to reiterate the importance of considering the gendered impacts of age discrimination. Considering that women live longer than men and are more likely to experience poverty, it follows that women are more likely to face detriment without access to protection from discrimination in relation to goods, facilities and services.
Contact Information: For further information or to discuss the response in more detail, please contact:
Elaine Crory, Women’s Sector Lobbyist at WRDA: elaine.crory@wrda.net
Meghan Hoyt, Women’s Sector Lobbyist Policy Assistant at WRDA: meghan.hoyt@wrda.net
About the Women’s Policy Group NI: The Women’s Policy Group NI is dedicated to advocating for gender equality and challenging systemic injustice affecting women and girls. The group’s work is informed by the lived experiences of women and girls and rooted in international human rights law.