In March the WI updated their Equality, Diversity and Inclusion policies, which makes for interesting reading.
The Women's Institute is the the UK’s largest women’s membership organisation so a fairly important voice in campaigning for women and supporting them. So, it was difficult to read that the WI "called in trans education charity Gendered Intelligence to help draft the section on transgender members in the new Equality, Diversity and Inclusion policy".
www.thewi.org.uk/about-us/wi-key-messages/equality-diversity-inclusion-policy
This might explains why anyone reading the WI's Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Glossary of Terms could see definitions for the words:
Agender, Ally, Cisgender, Gender expression, Gender fluid, Gender identity, GRC, Non-binary, Transitioning
But there are no written definitions for Lesbian or Bi-sexual .
Bi-Gender of course, is defined.
(if you were wondering, the word Gay is defined as a man who has a romantic and/or sexual orientation towards men .)
Anyone visiting a WI, would think that inclusion policies based on race, disability or ageism might be the most appropriate topics to spend time getting right. It is a predominantly white charity with a lot of elderly and infirm members. I'm enormously proud of the WI and our members. Warm, welcoming, campaigning - the whole bunch. Many campaigns have started in grass roots WIs such as Keep Britain Tidy.
I'm deeply upset to read of the brief sentence given to breastfeeding mums in their document, but paragraphs devoted to transgender members.
But I am mostly furious at the disregard given to lesbian and bisexual members who only have a small paragraph in the Inclusivity policy and are not even graced with being defined in the Glossary.