• the nature of the job demands a man or woman because of their physiology, excluding strength and stamina;
• authenticity;
• decency or privacy, for example, a female nurse in a girls’ boarding school. However, in Etam plc v Rowan (1980), the genuine occupational qualification defence did not succeed, as the failure to employ a male sales assistant in a female clothes shop was held to be unlawful, as there were, in practice, female sales assistants who could assist in the changing rooms;
• a post which requires the employee to live in, where there are no separate sleeping and sanitary facilities and it is unreasonable to expect the employer to provide them;
• posts in a private home (which for the SDA 1975 exemption only involves social or physical contact with the person living in the home);