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IMI Blog

  • Equality in the Clinical Photography Profession

    Updated:10 November 2011

    Regularly we see the “Female Photographer” advert appear stating that this is acceptable under the Sex Discrimination Act as a genuine occupational qualification. Is this actually true?

    How many posts where female only vacancies have been filled actually only undertake photography of women? Why do we then not see “male photographer only adverts?"

    I expect the common argument that women should be given a choice of male or female photographer is spouted out.

    Why then do men not get given the same courtesy?

    Surely if a female photographer in a female only post undertakes photography of men as well then this forfeits the exemption under the Sex Discrimination act!

    Seldom do I see the same being applied to other specialities in healthcare, for example Urology where it is common for female nurses to be running erectile dysfunction clinics!

    The same applies to chaperones we seem to be the only healthcare profession obsessed with insisting on chaperones for a male photographer photographing female patients.

    A quick survey I did from a few departments clearly shows female photographers rarely offer or have a chaperone for male patients or are required to by their employers.

    As the Equality and Human rights Commission state on their website “Example. A hospital insists that a male nurse has a chaperone when seeing patients. If a female nurse is not required to have a chaperone, this may be direct sex discrimination”.

    I suggest as a profession we do not abide by the Equality Act 2010 and in fact regularly discriminate when advertising “female only” photographers and insisting only male photographers have chaperones.

    Posted for discussion by an IMI Member

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