[4] Parity was denied charitable status for a number of years because it was seeking changes in the law to redress statutory sex discrimination, and thus was deemed to be political.
Their campaigns have stopped government sex discrimination which, in the case of winter fuel payments, had denied an estimated £20 million per year to males between the ages of 60–65.
[9] Parity claims successes in four main areas: prescription charges, winter fuel payments, bus travel concessions and, in association with others, widower's benefits: Parity's first major success began in 1993 under its original name, when CESPA member Cyril Richardson, an asthmatic, took the government to court over sex discrimination in entitlement for free prescriptions.
[12][13] In 1998 Parity member John Taylor went to the High Court to contest the fact that the government was denying winter fuel payments to men aged 60–65 that women were able to receive.
[16] In 2000 Parity took the Government to the European Court of Human Rights over the fact that it denied free bus travel to men aged 60–65.
[18] However, in June 2001 it became clear that Parity would win the case if it went to court and the government relented, with John Prescott announcing men would receive free bus passes from age 60.
[19] The Travel Concessions (Eligibility) Bill finally passed in 2003 resulting in males receiving the £50 million per annum in benefits that the state had denied them.
[22][23] The organisation also forced Gillian Morgan of the Welsh Assembly to stop making the same claims in the "Strategic Action Plan to Address Violence to Women".