Is this correct? (Equality Act)

[parentalhelpline]

I'm doing some training at work and the video I'm watching says:

'The Equality Act 2010 protects people from discrimination due to protected characteristics including: race: gender, disability, sexual orientation: transgender, religion and age.'

Punctuation is all theirs.

I've looked up the protected characteristics on the gov.uk website, and they use 'sex' rather than 'gender' and 'gender reassignment' rather than 'transgender'.

Is there a difference between the last two?

Funnily enough, they don't give pregnancy or maternity leave in their examples of protected characteristics.

trans individuals, even before any gender reassignment will be able to claim protection under this section.

It doesn't cover numerous people under the trans umbrella because it's about "reassigning" to the opposite sex permanently.

The language should reflect the law.

I do wonder when companies fail to go through the really basic process of simply cutting & pasting direct from the legislation, how many other laws the go around rewriting the words of just because

Somehow I bet they don’t change the wording of the health & safety at work act for example or the wording of the legislation around their requirements under the companies act & yet they always feel it’s fine not to put the words of the actual law into training/information about equality

Weird….

Somehow I bet they don’t change the wording of the health & safety at work act for example or the wording of the legislation around their requirements under the companies act & yet they always feel it’s fine not to put the words of the actual law into training/information about equality

Weird….

It really is striking.

They can't actually make up their preferred version of the law. They are bound by the Equality Act like everyone else. Sex is missing entirely and it's sex, with a definition that is biological. Not gender. Likewise, as pp has said, so is belief.

I'd misquote Terry Pratchett at them and point out that they may not believe in the the government's version of the Equality Act, but in a court of law it will most certainly believe in them. And it could end up getting very expensive for them.

@CatherinaJTV

"Gender reassignment" is also protected when it is just "planned", so I would say the text is correct.

The text does not use the correct protected characteristics. It gets three wrong and misses two completely.

How did you come to the conclusion that the answer to the OP's question whether the text used in the training accurately quotes the protected characteristics is that the text is correct in light of that?

BBC bite size explains sex as 'refers to a person's gender'. Dear me.

www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zcs4ng8/revision/2

Can’t believe a work place training course has missed out pregnancy and maternity.

What was the course on OP? Was it about equality or was this just mentioned in passing?

[quote FlibbertyGiblets]BBC bite size explains sex as 'refers to a person's gender'. Dear me.

www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zcs4ng8/revision/2[/quote]
And even here:

www.tes.com/news/biology-gcse-criticised-confusing-sex-and-gender

For crying out loud!

Why would you say the PCs "include" things, just leave out one (sex) and add two that aren't PCs?!

It's because lobby groups pushed so hard for changes to the act that they assumed it would be changed. When Liz Truss announced it wasn't changing about 9 months ago, several organisations had already built training based around the changes that didn't happen.

Instead of updating for accuracy, they have pushed on and their desired changes are being normalised by the back door. It's really important to challenge inaccurate information every time. Most companies are grateful to be alerted that they are not following the wording of the law and could be in breach.

@CatherinaJTV

this is the link to the relevant section

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/7

Gender reassignment
(1) A person has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if the person is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person's sex by changing physiological or other atributes of sex.

(my bold)

trans individuals, even before any gender reassignment will be able to claim protection under this section.

As I understand it the point listed by CatherinaJTV actually means that a person proposing to undergo gender reassignment cannot be treated any less favourably than someone of the same biological sex up to the point that a GRC is issued, after which they should in most cases be treated as someone of the opposite sex (ie their newly acquired sex (although of course humans cannot actually change sex)) and even then there are situations where a TW will still be treated as male.

So a man proposing to transition to a TW cannot be treated less favourably than any other man, nor discriminated against because of a trans status.

What it DOES NOT mean is that a man proposing to transition should be treated as if he were a woman as soon as he declares that intention.

I was looking at my department's training recently so I could be ready in case they decide to retrain us and the protected characteristics are extremely similar to the OP's but then they've added a line (which I'm paraphrasing) "and anything else that is not related to your work". I think the people writing these courses have completely lost sight of the law.

[quote FlibbertyGiblets]BBC bite size explains sex as 'refers to a person's gender'. Dear me.

www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zcs4ng8/revision/2[/quote]
Archived here archive.ph/eKTqA

This is in the Scottish National 5, Business management section.

@merrymouse

Can’t believe a work place training course has missed out pregnancy and maternity.

What was the course on OP? Was it about equality or was this just mentioned in passing?

It was at the beginning of a course on Adult Safeguarding. I'm going to go over the Diversity and Inclusion course when I have a moment and see what that says. If it is different, I'll be asking why.

Sorry, I'm the OP.

And yes, I think it outrageous that an organisation which I think employs more women than men would miss out pregnancy and maternity leave.