Scotland’s Equality Evidence Strategy 2023-2025

9. Glossary

Equality evidence – see the What is equality evidence? section of the strategy

Protected characteristic – as set out in the Equality Act 2010 it is illegal to discriminate against someone based on these characteristics. They are: age, sex, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, race, religion of belief, marriage and civil partnership, disability and pregnancy and maternity.

Intersectionality – is shaped by 3 key tenets: (1) people are shaped by their simultaneous membership of multiple interconnected social categories; (2) the interaction between multiple social categories occurs within a context of connected systems and structures of power; (3) structural inequalities are the outcomes of the interaction between social categories, power relations and contexts.^[10]

Intersectional data – data that takes into account two or more combinations of individual, social/cultural and environmental characteristics and, where the dataset allows, the context in which these combinations of characteristics give rise to relative advantage and disadvantage.

Structural inequality – inequality that is embedded in social structures, based on institutionalised conceptions of differences based on, for example, sex, race, sexual orientation or disability.

Lived experience – knowledge and expertise gained through direct involvement, such as experience of inequality or discrimination, or through group membership.