- (d) The job holder worked in a prison or hospital where all the people present were men and it was reasonable that the job should not be held by a woman: section 7(2)(d).
43. The defence of a GOQ could be relied on where only some of the duties of the job fell within the circumstances described but it could not be relied on in respect of a vacancy where the employer already had enough male employees to carry out those duties: section 7(3) and (4).
44. The SDA 1975 exempted a range of jobs from the ambit of the Act in whole or in part. For example, as regards prison officers it was not unlawful to impose a height requirement on both male and female prison officers: see section 18(1). Further the Act made some textual amendments to earlier legislation which assumed that all employees in occupations covered by that legislation would be men. For example, the provision in the Mines and Quarries Act 1954 which provided that no female should be employed below ground at a mine was modified to apply only to jobs where the duties ordinarily required the employee to spend a significant proportion of his time below ground: see section 21(1) of the SDA 1975. The language used in the Coal Mines Regulation Act 1908 was also modified to reflect the fact that women might now be employed; for the words “workman” or “man” there were substituted “worker”: section 21(2).
45. Part 3 of the SDA 1975 dealt with discrimination in fields other than employment, in particular schools and universities (with an exception for single-sex establishments) and in the provision of goods, facilities or services. Section 29 provided that it was unlawful to discriminate on grounds of sex in the provision of a wide range of services including banking, transport, recreation and the services of any trade or local authority.
46. Again, there were various exceptions such as providing accommodation where the provider intended to continue to reside at the premises: section 32(1)(a). Section 35(1) provided a more general exception to the prohibition in section 29(1) for a person who provided facilities or services restricted to men where, for example (section 35(1)(c)):
“(c) the facilities or services are provided for, or are likely to be used by, two or more persons at the same time, and
(i) the facilities or services are such, or those persons are such, that male users are likely to suffer serious embarrassment at the presence of a woman, or
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