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Open research questions in Discrimination and Equality Law

189 gap statements mined from Discrimination and Equality Law papers in our 7.9M-paper local library, which holds 2,984 papers on the topic — drawn mostly from each paper's own stated research gap, future-work, challenge and limitation notes, and its abstract. The ones listed below are a selection still marked open; each names the study that raised it, with a DOI link where the paper has one.

Choosing where to publish on Discrimination and Equality Law? See the ranked Social Science journals.

What the literature leaves open

  • Intense judicial scrutiny is warranted as it captures how carbon emission objectives, green gendered taxes and gender-based violence against women after a flash flood are connected and that all of these inequalities are serious demanding of objective, sufficient and evidence-based reasons, defences and justifications.

    Avoiding or pursuing gender just transitions · 2026 · DOI

  • While explicit discrimination isn’t as common, indirect discrimination remains a persistent, under-recognized challenge, existing in forms of policies, practices, and institutional cultures.

    RECOGNIZING STRUCTURAL GENDER DISCRIMINATION IN INDIAN PUBLIC SECTOR INSTITUTIONS: A JUDICIAL PERSPECTIVE · 2026 · DOI

  • This Note analyzes the Supreme Court’s tiers of scrutiny—rational basis review, intermediate scrutiny, and strict scrutiny—to argue that a new suspect class is warranted for sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI), triggering strict scrutiny for SOGI classifications.

    Building Bridges: Queer Rights in and out of the Courts · 2025 · DOI

  • The need to evaluate tax system equity through a gendered lens. The limited practical impact of the CFR on VAT-related matters.

    Lost in Translation: Gender Equality and the Interplay of the Equal Access and VAT Directives · 2026 · DOI

  • The lack of concrete protections for gender equality despite the abundance of secondary legislation. The limited practical impact of the CFR on VAT-related matters.

    Lost in Translation: Gender Equality and the Interplay of the Equal Access and VAT Directives · 2026 · DOI

  • The lack of similar findings in international law where cases challenging xenophobic discrimination in Denmark have rarely succeeded. The need for a more satisfactory interpretation of the law to address xenophobia in EU law.

    Addressing Xenophobia in EU Law: Slagelse Almennyttige Boligselskab, Afdeling Schackenborgvænge (C-417/23) · 2026 · DOI

  • There is a lack of recent and representative data on the prevalence of discriminations and gender-based violence in Switzerland. Prior work has shown that these phenomena are underreported.

    Discriminations et violences de genre en Suisse analysées au prisme de l’hétérosexisme · 2026 · DOI

  • The transition to the digital age has exacerbated certain discriminatory behaviours. There is a need to balance the protection of equality of opportunity with the limitations of criminal law.

    Protection against Discrimination through Criminal Law · 2026 · DOI

  • There is a need to examine the impact of digitalization on contemporary forms of discrimination. There is a lack of cases addressing discrimination at the national jurisprudential level.

    Protection against Discrimination through Criminal Law · 2026 · DOI

  • The paper argues that there is a need to view MAIHDA as a descriptive tool that highlights stratified heterogeneity, while remaining open to multiple theoretical interpretations.

    Reweighting intersectionality: Statistical and epistemic alignment in intersectional MAIHDA · 2026 · DOI

  • The lack of protection for intersectionally marginalized women under US equal pay laws. The difficulty of winning intersectional equal pay cases due to the requirements of US anti-discrimination laws.

    Insufficient Intersectionality: The Limits of Federal Wage Discrimination Lawsuits in the 21st Century · 2026 · DOI

  • The lack of large N-analyses of how women who file equal pay cases based on gender and one or more of their intersecting identities fare in court. The need to consider intersectionality in addressing the wage gap. The limitations of US equal pay laws in addressing the wage gap for intersectionally marginalized women.

    Insufficient Intersectionality: The Limits of Federal Wage Discrimination Lawsuits in the 21st Century · 2026 · DOI

  • The paper identifies a gap in the existing literature, which has not adequately addressed the intersectional discrimination faced by migrant women in atypical work. The EUSS's design, focusing on continuity of employment, has not been scrutinised in the context of intersectional discrimination.

    The Legacy of EU Citizenship Status in the EU Settlement Scheme: Women in Atypical Work · 2026 · DOI

  • It highlights the lack of a universal answer to the question of how to determine whether treatment is "because of" a protected characteristic. The paper argues that the reliance on the "but-for" test is problematic and undermines the coherency of discrimination law.

    CAUSATION IN DISCRIMINATION LAW: THE TORTIOUS “BUT-FOR” TEST · 2026 · DOI

  • The study aims to address the gap by exploring the consequences of labor regulations on labor market outcomes. The paper revisits the central propositions of Botero et al. (2004) using newly developed and updated measures of labor regulations.

    Legal origins, labor regulations, and labor market outcomes · 2025 · DOI

  • This legal solution is accompanied by a number of open questions, especially as the participants in public announcements and job advertisements procedures in special employment regimes enjoy the two instance internal protection in the same situation, which calls into question the effective application of the principle of equality before the law.

    Protection of jobseekers participating in job announcements and advertisements, and the right to an effective remedy in the general employment regime · 2020 · DOI

  • In our preferred estimates that are weighted to be representative of the workforce, we find evidence that there is less discrimination against older men and women in states where age discrimination law allows larger damages, and more limited evidence that there is lower discrimination against older women in states where disability discrimination law allows larger damages.

    Do State Laws Protecting Older Workers from Discrimination Reduce Age Discrimination in Hiring? Evidence from a Field Experiment · 2019 · DOI

  • It has established that there is no consensus in matters of (un)equal treatment of men and women in criminal sentencing in Europe, but has failed to address a more significant issue - is exemption of an entire sex justifiable and reasonable, even in the absence of the afore consensus at European level.

    Men in the age of (formal) equality: The curious case of Khamtokhu and Aksenchik · 2019 · DOI

  • It argues that these transitions have transformed the theory of intersectionality rather than anti-discrimination law, with the consequence that black women remain eclipsed as legal subjects and thus legal protection for black women workers remains elusive in the UK and Europe.

    Intersectionality in the UK: Between the american paradigm and the European paradox · 2016 · DOI

  • The decision has significant implications for liberal democracies and their legitimacy claims.

    Zurück in die 1950er Jahre. Die Abschaffung von affirmative action an Hochschulen durch den U.S. Supreme Court · 2026 · DOI

  • By structuring individuals into intersecting social categories (strata), and modeling both within- and between-stratum variation, MAIHDA offers a way to quantify stratum-level heterogeneity while mitigating issues of sparse data through partial pooling.

    Reweighting intersectionality: Statistical and epistemic alignment in intersectional MAIHDA · 2026 · DOI

  • To this end, the theory of reproduction codes, which is considered to offer a wider range of explanations than prominent habitus theories, but is as yet little known, are used to discuss an alternative interpretation of Gomolla and Radtke’s (2009) empirical findings, also due to the fact that, in contrast to Luhmann’s theory, it develops a dialectical-materialistic concept of code.

    Different reproduction codes as a cause of institutional discrimination against certain milieus of migrant children · 2021 · DOI

  • Among others, it required Member States to establish equality bodies, which, given the institutional autonomy, vary significantly across jurisdictions: from bodies with competences limited to advisory and promotional functions, to those empowered to make substantive decisions, as well as institutions combining elements of both…

    Procedural Paths to Human Dignity: Enforcing the Prohibition of Discrimination in Slovenia and Beyond · 2026 · DOI

  • Lack of available EUSS-specific data, - FOI requests were not satisfied due to exceeding the appropriate cost…

    The Legacy of EU Citizenship Status in the EU Settlement Scheme: Women in Atypical Work · 2026 · DOI

  • We describe how language barriers, cultural differences, vulnerable legal status, precarious economic status, newness in the host country and job, lower education and skill levels, and discrimination all generate vulnerabilities that are embodied as poor working conditions, limited knowledge of health and safety, impeded communication with employers and service providers, detrimental behaviours towards risks…

    Mechanisms of inequalities in health and safety : conceptual model and research agenda · 2014 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Discrimination and Equality Law

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Open questions raised by papers listed on this page include: (1) The lack of concrete protections for gender equality despite the abundance of secondary legislation (“Lost in Translation: Gender Equality and the Interplay of the Equal Access and…”, 2026); (2) The lack of similar findings in international law where cases challenging xenophobic discrimination in Denmark have rarely succeeded (“Addressing Xenophobia in EU Law: Slagelse Almennyttige Boligselskab, Afdeling…”, 2026); (3) There is a lack of recent and representative data on the prevalence of discriminations and gender-based violence in Switzerland (“Discriminations et violences de genre en Suisse analysées au prisme de…”, 2026); (4) There is a need to balance the protection of equality of opportunity with the limitations of criminal law (“Protection against Discrimination through Criminal Law”, 2026); (5) The paper argues that there is a need to view MAIHDA as a descriptive tool that highlights stratified heterogeneity, while remaining open to multiple theoretical interpretations (“Reweighting intersectionality: Statistical and epistemic alignment in…”, 2026). 189 gap statements have been mined from Discrimination and Equality Law papers in our 7.9M-paper local library, which holds 2,984 papers on the topic; the gaps come from whichever of those papers state one. They are mostly the research gaps the authors state and the papers' abstracts, plus future-work, limitations and challenges passages. The ones listed below are a selection still marked open; each names the study that raised it, with a DOI link where the paper has one, so you can read the original claim in context.

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