I also wrote to Network Rail as follows:
Dr Mr Haines
I have had cause to look at your diversity and inclusion policy since you recently decided to remove the advertising "I heart JK Rowling" by Standing for Women on your digital board at Waverley Station, Edinburgh.
Looking at your "Everyone Matters" strategy I do not see how you can monitor sex discrimination under the Equality Act 2010. No where in the document is sex defined and the section under gender pay gap refers to "women", yet you do not define what a woman is in your monitoring. In your "Part 8 Appendix - terminology matters" you do however have several definitions such as "gender-neutral", "cisgender", "gender reassignment", "non-binary gender". You also mention "gender identity" under the LGBT+ terminology. That is a lot of words to be inclusive of peoples personalities, but excludes women! You should include "sex" (as a protected characteristic in your terminology), that is a man (adult human man) or woman (adult human female).
You rightly list the nine protected characteristics of the Equality Act 2010:
"Protected characteristics: These are the grounds upon which discrimination is unlawful. The characteristics are: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation." Yet I do not understand how you can monitor sex discrimination as under monitoring you say:
"Monitoring: gathering data about everyone’s ‘protected characteristics’ to check whether groups of people are fairly represented and being treated equally. For example, monitoring the representation of women, or the representation of disabled people, in the workforce or at senior levels within organisations to identify trends in recruitment or promotion."
But you are not monitoring the representation of women under the protected characteristic of sex because as I said above nowhere in your document do you define a woman to mean adult human female as it is in the Equality Act 2010. Men who may have worked up the ranks in your organisation then decide to undergo gender reassignment at a high managerial level would according to your policy be included in women's pay average, thus inflating the average pay of women.
It seems to me that in order to be inclusive you are actually being exclusionary to women. You are failing to adhere to the Equality Act 2010 because you cannot measure something you do not define.
I would be very interested in your views on this matter and how this oversight has arisen.
Kind regards,
First reply:
Thank you for your email to our chief executive, Andrew Haines, about our diversity and inclusion policy.
I’m sorry to see you’re concerned about our processes for monitoring discrimination on the basis of sex. As an inclusive and diverse company we have a zero tolerance approach to discrimination of any kind and we’ve forwarded your letter to out diversity and inclusion team so that they can review your concerns. We will be in touch shortly.
Follow up:
Thank you for your email to our chief executive, Andrew Haines, about our Everyone Matters strategy. I’m responding as I’m part of Andrew’s correspondence team.
I’m sorry to see that you’re concerned about our approach to diversity and inclusion. We want to be an organisation where all our people are treated equally and feel respected and valued.
As you mention, we recognise sex as being a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010. We monitor reported sex discrimination based on an employee’s recorded or given sex. Therefore, if an employee reports that they have faced discrimination because of their sex, this will form the basis of their complaint. All reports of sex discrimination are taken seriously and thoroughly investigated.
Thank you once again for your email.
Yours sincerely,
So sex discrimination is monitored on the sex a person gives at network rail so is meaningless for monitoring.