Asking your sexual orientation at work

[wakeupandsmellthecoffee]

Weird question I know but at work today boss was filling out new member of staffs form .
One of the questions was ie white hetrosexual femail
I know I haven't explained this properly .
It's just that I thought this is so wrong as it's no ones business what your preference is .
She said it was data and it was to make sure that they were employing fairly

Kim - but if the forms show that, say, not many Somalians are applying for parking permits wouldn't the assumption just be that they don't have cars?
What action would they take?

Kim, no I don't have an issue with it, just the opposite, as my posts bear out.

I also agree with you that trans- are distinctly unrepresented in the process.

For me this thread has highlighted again the issue that many people just don't understand why these forms are used. There needs to be a big national push on why this information is useful to society as a whole

Absolutely.

If anyone is interested in why data is collected and how it can be beneficial they could access the booklet by Stonewall "What's it got to do with you?"

Sooty no my business to speak for Andrew, but I think you may have missed his post a couple of pages back where he says he is from a religious minority that is traditionally discriminated against. So I don't think your assumptions about refuseniks necessarily hold true.

*not my business

Yes, ilovesooty, your idea that only people who don't suffer discrimation would have a problem with filling out the form is naive and counter-intuitive.

I hate discrimination but I also hate all the labels people have to learn to live with.

Kim just fyi trans is now being introduced on equality questionnaires. Will take a couple of years for it to be more widespread though as systems have to catch up.

ilovesooty The refusal rate was published in the quarterly online newsletter. The figures for those who did answer were not published.

There's a balance here between individual privacy and the laudable desire to see how we are doing and I regard asking questions about religion and orientation as going too far in one direction - I appreciate that others will differ.

As for the demographics and I'd also be somewhat interested in the demographic of all those people refusing to answer by definition I can't tell you except this: the office is 60% female. So even if all the 10% who provided the information were women - which is unlikely - half of the office was women who would not answer!