Discrimination against sex workers
Discrimination against sex workers
Section 6 of the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 includes the protected attribute ‘profession, trade or occupation’. Discrimination on this basis is prohibited in the areas defined in the Act. This protects people who provide commercial sexual services, aka: sex workers.
There is an exception to discrimination on the basis of this attribute set out in section 26(5) of the Act, “[an] employer may discriminate on the basis of a person’s profession, trade or occupation in relation to the offering of employment if experience in a particular profession, trade or occupation is relevant to the employment or offer and is a genuine occupational requirement for the position or role on offer and it is reasonable to discriminate on that basis in the circumstances.”
For more information, see the Victorian Equal Opportunity & Human Rights Commission’s Guideline: Sex Work Discrimination (www.humanrights.vic.gov. au/static/bb9bc7cd2bf5f934b039d89d0f0baab6/ Resource-Sex_work_discrimination-Guideline- English-May_2023-2.pdf).
