I am putting on my hard hat and flack jacket as I know the responses I am likely to get. I want to be clear I am GC but I also believe in equality. Please read all of my post as I cover the use of mother towards the end.
When writing HR policies in relation to all 9 protected characteristics, including sex, gender neutral language such as employee, them and they actually promote equal treatment. For example pay policy, recruitment policy, promotion policy etc.
When writing family friendly HR policies such as Adoption, Maternity, Paternity, Parental and Shared parental leave, using the gender neutral term partner makes policies easier to read and again promotes equal treatment (sexual orientation). This is because a man and woman, two men or two women can get married, be Civil Partners or live together in a committed relationship. Note: these policies also need to be legally compliant and interact sensibly with each other.
Legally adoption has a primary adopter who can be male or female, and a secondary adopter who again can be male or female. Using gender neutral terms such as primary adopter, partner, employee, them and they makes the policy much more straight forward. E.g. “Primary adopters are entitled to 39 weeks statutory adoption pay their partners are entitled to 2 weeks paternity leave “ rather than “Primary adopters are entitled to 39 weeks statutory adoption pay their husband, wife, male or female civil partner or male or female partner are entitled to 2 weeks paternity leave.”
Now the difficult bit, these policies also need to reflect that whilst there is a “Father” who provided the sperm, they may not be in the picture in terms of HR policy. For example two lesbians and one (or both) have a baby, how would they read a policy that states “Fathers are entitled to attend 2 antenatal appointments.” As partners may not be the father I used “Partners are entitled to attend 2 antenatal appointments.”
Now for “Mothers”, I have previously used pregnant employee and surrogate and excluded the word mother. In my defence, at the time it appeared future legislation and case law would support this approach. Thankfully, there has now been case law and legislation reinforcing the very specific role of mothers. If I was drafting these HR policies now I would use Mother but also pregnant employee and partner as appropriate.
The driving force for writing gender neutral policies was actually recognising same sex relationships and underpinning equal treatment for women.
It is only in the last 5 years or so that the Transgender agenda has raised its misogynistic head and is trying to erase women and mothers.