What's the difference between gender and gender identity? (Stonewall related)

you may not consent to data on your 'gender' or 'gender identity' being held about you:

www.personneltoday.com/hr/general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr-employer/

The list below is from the Government website and shows the permitted list of information a company is allowed to hold about an employee. Gender or gender identity is not on this list.

Personal data an employer can keep about an employee
Employers must keep their employees’ personal data safe, secure and up to date.

Employers can keep the following data about their employees without their permission:

name
address
date of birth
sex
education and qualifications
work experience
National Insurance number
tax code
emergency contact details
employment history with the organisation
employment terms and conditions (eg pay, hours of work, holidays, benefits, absence)
any accidents connected with work
any training taken
any disciplinary action
Employers need their employees’ permission to keep certain types of ’sensitive’ data, including:

race and ethnicity
religion
political membership or opinions
trade union membership
genetics
biometrics, for example if your fingerprints are used for identification
health and medical conditions
sexual history or orientation

www.gov.uk/personal-data-my-employer-can-keep-about-me

Maybe add at the end your concern about people's gender identities being assumed - maybe saying that it is not been established that everyone has a gender identity and that they certainly be asked what it is and given the option of "none" or "prefer not to say".

Someone else might be able to do better, but what about something like:

Hi HR Manager

I notice that my HR record has been changed as regards sex/gender. Specifically that my gender identity has been assumed (without consultation with me) to be female and also that there is no record of my sex.

Please can you explain the thinking behind this and please can you provide a copy of the Equalities Impact Assessment carried out prior to making this change to the way records are collected and held.

I am concerned that if we are not recording an employee's sex then we will not be able to monitor/uphold compliance with the Equalities Act, which specifies sex as a protected characteristic.

Kind regards

The gender thing is clever.

Gender replaced sex when sex was meant all over the place, years ago. Presumably because sex is rude

So the population think gender means sex.

Then the definition of gender changes and isn't agreed at all.

Next say that some people want to put other things and to be inclusive there need to be more options.

Ok.

Gender

Male
Female
Non binary
Prefer not to say

(Have seen this a lot)

Now sex and gender is mixed into one.
However most people will simply see gender and tick male female. As they have done for years. Not knowing that they are actually being asked not about sex but internal gender ID.

Why?

Get rid of sex as a metric/ determinant/ thing of relevance

Simultaneously don't spell this out so people mostly glance and tick male/ female. Ensuring that trans people are a minority. Because if you spell it out- by explaining what gender is actually asking. Then the results might start doing things that they don't want.

Voila! Sex based everything gone. No one really knows and things it's still sex. No questions asked.

Clever really.

This is Stonewall's endgame. The data collected becomes entirely confused and hence becomes meaningless.

Once the confusion becomes apparent 'we don't know who are men, women or non binary', it then becomes pointless even trying to collect the data.

So the gender pay gap becomes redundant and is shelved. We no longer know how pay is structured, it is surely coincidence that the cunty sort seem to have lower status.

Taswama
I would point it out on a purely factual basis. You are protecting them by ensuring they reflect the law correctly- it may harm the company if someone was to raise a sex discrimination claim and they haven’t mentioned sex. It suggests they don’t understand their legal obligations.
Don’t object to the word gender, just point out that sex is the term in the Act.
(Only raise it if it’s not going to be held against you).

I have a similar question as I've just noticed that the E&D page says 'we are committed to ensuring all staff, (other stakeholders) .. are treated fairly and equally on the basis of their race, religion, gender, sexuality, disability etc etc.

I really want to point out that the others are protected characteristics but gender is not and it should be sex. And maybe point out the recent census case. But I'm not sure if that's a good idea or not.

They are changing the category of they data they hold about you without your consent. It was recorded as 'sex' and they have changed it to 'gender identity'.
I don't know the is and outs but it is not permitted under GDPR, that is certain.
Have a look at the ONS letter for some of the related legalese.

sexinthecensus.org/on-census-night/

A certain political party has done exactly the same thing to its membership and it is being challenged.

Gender is/was often used as a synonym for sex. If there are only two options I would accept that they mean sex but I agree it would be better to use sex.

It may be the payroll system the company are using?

I have a small business and use a payroll software by a company called moneysoft. A couple of years ago they updated sex to gender in the employee details, I emailed them at the time and told them about the equality act 2010 but got fobbed off. I wonder if I should write to them again?

Sex is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010. How can the company satisfy itself that no discrimination on the basis of sex is taking place if they are not collecting the data. If they are collecting data on other protected characteristics but not sex it may be possible to argue this is indirect discrimination against females as they are the class of people most likely to face sex discrimination. i.e. they are not collecting data that would allow for proper identification of sex discrimination but are collecting data relating to other PC.

This made me curious about what information my employer collects. They have two fields:
Sex identifier: Man / Non-binary / Other preferred description / Prefer not to disclose / Woman
Gender reassignment: Y / N / prefer not to disclose.

"Gender - often expressed in terms of masculinity and femininity, gender is largely culturally determined and is assumed from the sex assigned at birth"

Um, that didn't help. Does it mean "what gender identity other people think you have"? "What sex other people think you have"?

I get the feeling no-one in the organisation will ever what they mean to the extent they could distinguish between the two fields "gender" and "gender identity" sufficiently to feel confident in giving a different answer to them.

Nor is it clear which one they would look at when trying to answer a question about sex equality.

And it's clear there is confusion between the two organisations -

Org A: Gender is compulsory, they've prefilled both based on (presumably) sex.
Org B: Gender identity is compulsory, they've prefilled both based on (presumably) sex.

The fact they've prefilled both suggests they're not sure what the difference is either.

I imagine each company would base "sex" data on the one they've decided is compulsory, so A would use "gender" and B would use "gender identity".

@Doyoumind same as the census!

By tracking both gender and gender identity they are tracking nothing. Anyone trans is going to put their gender, not their sex, which will align with their identity, therefore erasing their trans status and messing up the company's diversity figures.

*gender diverse, not divider

I’ve just looked at mine and ours is the same.
Gender has been filled in as female, with male as the other option and it’s an optional field.
Gender identity is a compulsory field and has also been filled in with female (other options are male, transgender female, transgender male, gender divider, prefer not to say, and “my gender identity is not listed here”).
Given that the Green Party just suspended a member for querying whether transwomen are female, I actually don’t know whether transwomen should select “transgender female” or “transgender male”.