Organisations citing Gender not Sex

[ClingFilmApplications]

I thought it might be useful to start a list of organisations incorrectly citing "Gender" not "Sex" as a protected characteristic.

For starters, Alston Primary School - centre of the controversial "No Outsiders" education programme:

http://www.alston.bham.sch.uk/no-outsiders

(see embedded slide presentation)

The UK Government redirection page for EHRC: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/equality-and-human-rights-commission

Arts Council. Every application form and all the terms and conditions for funding require sign up to gender as a protected characteristic but omits sex.

This and other gov quangos like it distribute millions of government funds and lottery money every year to all sorts of projects and organisations and hold those they fund to account if they don’t comply. This is the same for many government and lottery funds.

I recall Johnny Best raised this as being a problem for the culture sector as it makes it very difficult for organisations, institutions and partners to speak out.

Duke of Edinburgh’s.

I filled out a job app this week and the equality firm asked outright if the applicants gender was same as the ‘sex at birth’. I may not send it in (load of crap)

The Government website that you linked to; is incorrectly citing gender not sex.

The actual legislation is on here www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/4

Just to confirm...that the UK government website is currently misquoting the Equality Act.

Yup - that's why I mentioned it.

Royal Academy of Engineering on their Candidate Diversity Monitoring Form and their website.

Lambeth Council

twitter.com/cedawnow/status/1101458120134610944?s=21

Everything!

I literally cannot remember the last time I filled in a form and had to give my sex.

It's ridiculous.

Gender is so often used as a “nicer” way of saying “sex” - Gender Pay Gap anyone? There are posters up all over my work at the moment about “Gender Balance” too.

Trouble is, I can see why “Sex Pay Gap” and “Sex Balance” sound wrong on a poster.

This sort of thing is one reason (like relying on the Guardian and BBC for current affairs) why I was blind to this madness for so long. I genuinely thought “gender” was just a polite way of saying “sex”.

We all need to click at the bottom of the government website linked to, to point out that they are using gender when they should be using sex.

All the data I read as a secondary school governor uses gender and not sex eg exam results, behaviour reports

Yeah a lot of places use 'gender' as 'sex' is 'embarrassing' or whatever. Its quite pathetic to be honest. And part of how we got into this fucking mess in the first place. A lot of people use gender and sex interchangeably, thinking they still mean the same thing. But..they don't these days. Gender is totally different to sex, gender is about which stereotypes you follow and some mystical 'inner feeling' that most people seem to not have. Sex is, well sex, and it matters. As all women know.

My doctors surgery regularly use 'gender' and everytime I fill out something I do cross it out and put 'sex'. As gender is completely irrelevant in most areas of life, but especially in a medical setting.

I do that.

I am another person who just thought it was another way of asking your sex. Thinking about it though I haven't seen sex asked on a form in years.

I work in an organisation with strong links to other countries. Like slippery lizard I see references to gender balance, and gender pay gap. Although my inner voice says "sex not gender " I can see that sex balance and sex pay gap don't sound right ("does the organisation have the correct sex balance?") and may be particularly confusing to those who don't have English as a first language.

It used to be a less ‘tee-hee-hee-they-said-s-e-x’ way if asking. Since the word gender has no meaning now and the word ‘woman’ is heading that way, people have take notice.

Adding bucks child imms survey to the list. Online consent form, great. Asking my child's gender, not great.

SeaRabbit, thank you I've done that.

Might be easier to list organisations that do list the characteristics correctly...

Everywhere I look gender is used in place of sex ... even in something like on the Basis of Sex where the whole legal brief is re-typed to substitute the work sex (as in sex discrimination) with gender because the word sex is just that little bit too graphic ("and you know how men are" - quote from film). Once it started being used as a polite alternative it started tripping off the tongue and is now second nature I think. Largely unthinking, but also very specifically considered. Drives me batshit!

I never use it when I mean sex, for exactly this reason.

Sorry - I should have made it clearer in the original post that I was referring to organisations that list Gender as one of the protected EA2010 characteristics as opposed to the generic use of the term (which is of course commonplace).

The Labour party.