How should I fill in my employer's "Self-ID" questionnaire?

[OneInAGoogol]

My employer has asked employees to fill in a “self-identification” form, choosing fields that best reflect how we would like to be represented in the company’s demographic reporting, apparently to inform their diversity and inclusion efforts. I started losing hope a few words into the identity-centric preamble, but the last sliver disappeared once I got to the “Gender and Sex” section.

Please, oh wise ones, tell me how I should answer the following question (online, with no free-text fields), bearing in mind that I am female, and have no “gender identity” that I’m aware of. I thought I’d seen it all with these sorts of questions, but they’ve gone and achieved a whole new level of conflation:

————————————

People whose gender / sex is not male or female use many different terms to describe themselves. For the purposes here, “nonbinary” is an umbrella term to describe the experience of gender that is not male or female. While some transgender people are nonbinary, other transgender people have a gender identity that is either male or female.

Gender / Sex (select all that apply)

• Prefer not to answer
• Man
• Nonbinary
• Woman
• None of the options apply to me

Do you consider yourself transgender? (select one)

• Prefer not to answer
• No
• Yes
• None of the options apply to me

————————————

Note that if I check “Prefer not to answer” or “None of the options apply to me”, I can’t check any of the other options, so putting both “None of the options apply to me” and “Woman” is not possible (unfortunately, as that would probably be the most appropriate answer if I’m supposed to select my “gender / sex” as requested).

I’m considering putting “Nonbinary” and “Woman”, but I don’t know if there’s any risk of this sort of thing backfiring. For example, the company might look at the data to discover there are more “nonbinary” people than they realised, and decide they need to introduce a whole host of new measures to be inclusive of people who fit their preconceived idea of what it means to be “nonbinary” (which I presume involves being very woke and very navel-gazing). This would probably not be a desirable outcome.

@ThinEndOfTheWedge I should have clarified — they do require consent to collect this information, so it is possible to opt out. But given that many people will be filling it in without considering the implications, I want to be clear on any legal issues so that I can raise them when I email the relevant people internally.

Are you certain that, even with consent, this form does not comply with the law? Is it discriminatory to ask for someone's gender identity, even with the "None of the options apply to me" option included?

documentcloud.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:7ff7f6cd-07ab-40b0-b894-302ad7dab7e9

Here's Stonewall instructions on how to indoctrinate everyone into the stupid language. It's all what and how until the bottom of page 28 where there are vague useless points on what to do with the data.

The objective is of course to force the stupid language on everyone.

Ignore it, it's not worth engaging with.

europa.eu/youreurope/business/dealing-with-customers/data-protection/data-protection-gdpr/index_en.htm?cookies=disabled

I realise this is EU - but we are not at the end of the transition period and the UK signed up to GDPR at the time and I think is being transferred over. Most of the link should provide useful info including:

When is data processing allowed?

*EU data protection rules mean you should process data in a fair and lawful manner, for a specified and legitimate purpose and only process the data necessary to fulfil this purpose.

You must ensure that you fulfil one of the following conditions to process the personal data; you:

have been given the consent of the individual concerned
need the personal data to fulfil a contractual obligation with the individual
need the personal data to satisfy a legal obligation
need the personal data to protect the vital interests of the individual
process personal data to carry out the task in the interest of the public
are acting in your company's legitimate interests, as long as the fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual whose data are processed are not seriously impacted. If the person's rights override your company's interests, then you cannot process the personal data.

The GDPR applies strict rules for processing data based on consent. The purpose of these rules is to ensure that the individual understands what he or she is consenting to. This means that consent should be freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous by way of a request presented in clear and plain language.*

In your case - it seems a stretch to imply that answering equality related questions -which staff expect to do- but are not contained equality act - which is then not explained how it falls outside the equality act (sex m/f) (gender reassignment y/n)- is informed consent.

There’s probably stuff in the Human Rights Act - article 8 and 14 about the legal right to privacy and protection from discrimination/indirect discrimination including based on sex and political thought.

Questions about sex and gender reassignment - keeps the employer within the law, enables legally required equality assessments to be completed, and enables staff to answer accurately - particularly as the inclusion of non binary implies that women - who answer women - are signing up to acknowledgement of corrosive gender stereotypes and none of the above could inadvertently out people as GC.

Was it only me that immediately saw red at the listed order Man Nonbinary Woman? Used to always coming behind man, but now we have to come behind nonbinary!

Aye - if there was a listing for dog, mouse, gnat - woman would still come after gnats ass...

Isnt this a copy and paste job of the equality act stating that gender identity is not a protected category. Gender reassignment is but that is wholly sep3and different to sex and as such conflating gender and sex as the same thing was fundamentally rewriting the Equality Act and therefore not necessarily entirely legal if that leads to discrimination against women (on the bias of their sex) and indeed this entire questionnaire could be considered as doing that if it is not explicit in separating rights and equality based on sex and on gender resassignment.

You should probably refer to the Data Protection Act which is the actual law governing collection of personal data in the UK. www.gov.uk/data-protection (The Data Protection Act 2018 is the UK’s implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).)

I haven't re-read it but from memory it basically says no one should hold personal information on someone that isn't relevant to why they are on a database. eg if you take out a membership its irrelevant to have any information other than contact address and sub end date.

So as an employer the only info they should hold on you is your name, job title, salary.

If they want to do a survey trying to find out about equality, ie are women mainly doing lower level jobs, then as said up thread this should be done via an annonymous survey.

You could contact whoever sent out the questionnaire and say you think it breaches the UK Data Protection Act.

And additionally if they want to collect info for equality research they should use the accepted protected characteristics.

I am not an expert in HR however. And if they are thinking what they are doing is being inclusive by a remit wider than protected characteristics I would have thought the first step would be to ask employees if they want to answer these type of intrusive questions. Rather than just saying, and therefore implying you should, please fill in this form.