Diskrimineringslagen ur ett terapeutiskt perspektiv - En undersökning av diskrimineringslagens användbarhet utifrån den enskildes upplevelser av diskriminering och diskrimineringstvister

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this essay is to examine the availability of the Swedish Discrimination Act from the perspective of the individual, based on the individual’s experience of discrimination and the individual’s needs in a discrimination dispute. The background to the examination is a survey on discrimination towards junior doctors made by SYLF, Sveriges yngre läkares förening. The survey shows that a majority of those who had experienced discrimination in the workplace chose not to act against it. Only a few chose to take legal actions. In order to examine the availability of the Discrimination Act, the essay will use the legal scholarship Therapeutic Jurisprudence, TJ, which analyses the law’s implication on people’s wellbeing. According to TJ, the law does, intentionally or unintentionally, implicate the people who get in contact with it, in either a therapeutic or anti-therapeutic way. The essay has analysed the Discrimination Act from three different angles – how the discrimination in law and real life differs, which ways the law offers restoration for the individual and finally the therapeutic potential in the law’s demand to conduct internal processes. The essay shows that discrimination is experienced as complex, hard to define and expressed in variously individual, structural, organizational, formal and informal forms. Discrimination is also experienced as intersectional. This complex expression creates a discrepancy between the formal and narrow definition of discrimination in the law, and the more fluid and complicated experiences of reality. This means that the prohibition of discrimination in the Act might have trouble intercept the unfair treatment that is experienced as discrimination in real life. This might be problematic from a therapeutic perspective, since the essay shows that it is important that the individual in a legal dispute gets the opportunity to tell their story, get validation and participate in the process. The Discrimination Act offers an opportunity for those who have experienced discrimination to be adjudged compensation for discrimination, a tort especially designed for discrimination disputes, through a legal process. Alongside with the possibility to talk about their experiences and get them validated, the essay present other needs that the individual might have in the process – to receive an apology or an explanation and that the responsibility for the discrimination is determined. Preferably this is combined with some sort of restoration of the situation that has been impaired by the discrimination. The court proceedings offered by the Discrimination Act might meet some of the needs of the individual, for instance the need to tell their story (within the frame of the legal dispute), get the responsibility for the discrimination stated and get restoration in means of economical compensation. Other needs, as the need to get an apology or an explanation or to achieve a resolution to the situation, is out of reach for the legal process or might even be counteracted by the legal process. Those needs might be better met in a process without legal framing, focusing on meeting the needs of the individual, and aiming to put things right. Consequently, the Discrimination Act is able to offer some kinds of restoration and thereby therapeutic effects, but might in some cases, when the needs of the individual is out of reach for the law to meet, have anti-therapeutic effects on the individual. This makes the Discrimination Act available for the individual in some cases, but not in all. In the conclusion of this essay it is proposed that future research should explore alternative models for handling discrimination disputes, models which could work as a complement to the process offered by the Discrimination Act, focusing on meeting the emotional needs of the individual and to create socially sustainable solutions to the conflict.