Found this on twitter

When I was leafleting for Fair Play for Women in the lead up to the GRA consultation I met a young woman who told me her former student union had been pressured to make the main women’s toilets by the bar gender neutral in order to tick the last box go receive some kind of Stonewall ranking.

That's really quite unpleasant and reminds me of the worse aspects of MLM schemes where hapless recruits are pushed into morally dubious actions chasing the next reward.

So how many HAs or Trusts or Boards are there in England and Wales are there? I think there are probably about 60 counties with county police forces — or possibly fewer if some of them have merged. D councils participate in this too?

So potentially hundreds of people employed at least part-time to coordinate the training and collate the data, and potentially hundreds of thousands of public money being sent off to register the data each year. Millions of public money being wasted.

When I was leafleting for Fair Play for Women in the lead up to the GRA consultation I met a young woman who told me her former student union had been pressured to make the main women’s toilets by the bar gender neutral in order to tick the last box go receive some kind of Stonewall ranking.

The female students had objected (there were additional men’s and gender neutral loos in the building, just not as conveniently located - the women realised immediately that turning their loos GN would mean they were full of pissed up young men who couldn’t be arsed to walk down the corridor a bit to their own loos).

If this anecdote is anything to go by, I’m sure Notts police realised that stonewall rankings are expensive, largely pointless and do not actually contribute much to equality/diversity when you look at all 9 protected characteristics.

It's a business model
We see it in most areas of business.
Create an awards scheme, schmooze a few CEs, arbitrarily give out a few awards to those who play ball, 'ooh, we're the best in our industry at x', said company do loads of their own pr to also help promote the awards scheme too, rinse and repeat.
Loads of people have done this and get compsnies in the industry in question jumping through hoops to win awards.

Siri, what’s extortion?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extortion

I am appalled if hundreds of public sector organisations are all paying someone for 3 months each to compile Stonewall’s monitoring paperwork. On one aspect of diversity.

Scandalous.

Sarah
It's a massive con!
As soon as they passed the tipping point of having a certain number of organisations on board, it just became a question of the remaining ones scrabbling about to catch up with the others. NHS boards, CEs particularly are very competitive and hate to be outdone on being seen to be doing good. Ours was particularly afflicted by a massive ego. The Stonewall awards give them a chance to brag and show off. It's a competition at the end of the day isn't it.
The main area Stonewall excels in is getting the ear of bigwigs. No idea how.
I'm not aware anything we were being asked to do was illegal, or against policies.

It was more insidious, reams of documentation, evidence, surveys, questionnaires, training on xyz issues (over and above legally required) for at least x no of staff, at each level, every year, all that had to meet certain Stonewall criteria and interpretation of the existing ehr laws.

We are seeing this now with Stonewall law on access to single sex spaces. They interpret it in a way that suits their agenda.

Many NHS trusts were and still are completely overwhelmed so possibly welcomed what they thought was professional guidance.

Hi. I was involved, peripherally, in Stonewall submissions when I worked for an NHS Trust. There were registration fees to be paid to Stonewall, examples of how we'd implemented Stonewall suggested guidance in our policies, impact assessments etc, staff survey responses on LGBT matters, recruitment numbers, etc etc. We had one e&d staff member working 0.5wte on this alone, plus the clinical and non clinical research, reporting, required stonewall approved pr and branding once we'd entered the top 100. It took up an absurd amount of time, from many staff members, some of whom should really have been looking after patients. It also guided much of our practice and policies. This was before the T was a big thing and before mass NHS redundancies so am sure it is much more onerous now.

Notts did do misogyny hate crime first (and only?) out of all the forces so I do think they're better than most on women.

Doubt it, but it's still a good thing.

So their diversity officer spent 3 months just doing the application...

Looks like they realised that their time and energy was being monopolised by one area and they wanted to balance more with other protected characteristics -age sex disability etc while still keeping LGBT+ etc in there as well.

Good for them.

I hope others follow suit.

I assume the guidance accompanies the actual questionnaire or whatever the submission is, so would need to be read in conjunction (as per tax returns etc)

"2016 marked the first time Stonewall included trans criteria in the Workplace Equality Index. Specific work on trans inclusion will be monitored in the 2017 Index, but those questions will not count toward organisations’ final mark. This is to allow time for employers to implement trans specific work in a safe, legal manner.
From 2018, trans specific questions will count toward final marks, and organisations that cannot demonstrate specific commitments to trans equality will be unable to be listed as a Top 100 Employer. "

I tried, I really did, but my brain kept melting. So I don't know what the criteria are. It takes a special kind of person to engage with that kind of language.

I am genuinely wondering what they have to do. I mean presumably once they have implemented stuff that stuff wont change so what is the ranking based on. What are the criteria

I imagine that there is an ongoing work 'burden' of keeping up with Stonewall policy, definitions and requirements for what is submitted, checking you have an audit trail for it all, supporting evidence etc just to come out with a ranking that one may perhaps view as somewhat arbitrary. As they say in the article '“There is a financial cost to it, both in participation but also in the time your employees take to compile and comply with its requirements." Would be interested in reading the criteria too and whether they change year on year - I've found this one from 2017.
www.stonewall.org.uk/sites/default/files/stonewall_wei_2017_guidance.pdf

Nottingham is the first force to collate misogynistic hate crimes. However they also have an outspoken 'women's' centre which prides itself on having been inclusive of trans women. Very anti JKR. Bothered to make a public statement about it.

The one for self-identifying women?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3678957-Nottingham-Womens-Centre-events-are-for-all-self-identifying-women?pg=1

The sooner all police forces and other organisations realise that they can work on diversity and inclusion without these mad schemes the better. Stonewall doesn't 'own' diversity.

I would imagine that as the Police attend a lot of domestic violence call outs and see who the perpetrators of violent crimes are first hand, that there may have been push back from officers on the ground saying these are not the only people we need to protect and it’s wasting time that could be spent on much larger minorities. I’ve never met a Police officer who was backwards in coming forwards.

It is interesting- there's a whole industry out there where you pay to prove your credit. I would think the more general ones which include human and employment rights were as effective.

Nottingham is the first force to collate misogynistic hate crimes. However they also have an outspoken 'women's' centre which prides itself on having been inclusive of trans women. Very anti JKR. Bothered to make a public statement about it.