Equality in Britain

Equality and tolerance in United Kingdom

and their impact on business environment

When going abroad for doing business, it is absolutely necessary to be aware of the foreign cultural characteristics. Some values have greater importance in some countries than in others, and not being aware of that can cause real problems and obstacles.

Equality and tolerance are indicators for the evolution degree a country has reached. The civilised countries are usually tolerant towards minorities and very egalitarian, but the ones who didn't evolve very much still carry massive amounts of conservative ideas and practices. Individuals cannot speak their minds freely and cannot express their feelings or ideas if they live in a society who does not allow them to do it.

Having that freedom is very important in a business environment. For example negotiating with an intolerant or racist individual can be hard and unproductive. The lack of equality and tolerance can raise problems for the employers and employees, for negociators and for business partners.

Usually discrimination in caused by differences in terms of appearance, gender, age, race, ethnicity, disability, religion or sexual orientation.

Appearance based discrimination is usually directed against fat persons or people who don't match the standard or the tipical physical beauty and it is very common.

Gender based discrimination is very common in all the countries. The gender gap is larger in some societies and smaller in others but it does exist in all of them. In the corporate area, this is the main reason why men have higher positions at the job and greater incomes.

Race and ethnicity based discrimination can also interfere with doing business abroad.

Disability based discrimination is directed against people who have various kinds of physical disabilities.

Religion can cause great hatred between people, and in some countries people even start wars on this issue.

Sexual orientation should be something private but yet in lots of countries this has became a problem for the majority of the people. There