Work question: what is your gender identity?

[MintTeaLady]

My work has asked us to complete diversity questions. The first one is “what is your gender identity?”. The options are: Female, Male, Non-binary, Genderfluid, Genderqueer, prefer not to say, and another gender not listed.

I am drafting an email to ask for an additional option that would allow those who not believe in gender ideology to choose one. The comparator in the later questions is “what is your religion or belief?” which offers “no religion”.

Would “no gender identity” be appropriate to add to the list of options for the first question?

Thanks

I'd prefer: Don't believe in Gender, only Sex.

While you're at it ask them to include Cat Gender. You can link them to Bristol University guidance so they can't complain you aren't being serious. 😄

Yes, absolutely appropriate.

Yes, I like your idea and think it sounds like a reasonable request. i don't see how they could refuse really, seeing as they've what they've included as the other options.

I don’t have one either.

I think it's reasonable to request it.
You should perhaps also mention that 'female' and 'male' are sex-related terms, and gender is separate from sex, and it's transphobic to conflate sex and gender, so they might want to rethink those words being included as gender identities.

Depends, I wouldn't want them to replace it with "woman" and "man".

Also why are they collecting this information? Gender identity is not a protected characteristic under the EA, so they have no business collecting it.

Would “no gender identity” be appropriate to add to the list of options for the first question?

"I do not believe in gender ideology" would be better.

^ This.

If you are in the UK I would ask why they are not following the language used in the Equality Act 2010. If the data is used for diversity that should be their guide surely? Gender identity isn't used in the act, sex is the protected characteristic and if they are not collecting data on that how will they defend themselves in a sex discrimination case? Also under GDPR I believe there may be issues collecting special characteristic data like this if they can't evidence what its for.

I actually think my objection would be different. These are deeply personal questions. Your employer is overstepping whether or not you believe in gender identity. I would respond with a polite, ‘I consider these questions very intrusive and not relevant to my job performance. I will not be sharing this information.’

My work has asked us to complete diversity questions

Unless they are mandatory, why not ignore them ? I always do on the basis it's a load of old cobblers.

I've decided to pick a different option each time (we get them quarterly). So this time, I declined to answer about my sexuality. Next time I might be pan sexual.

Thanks all. To answer a few questions:

• they have limited information on ethnicity (as do most companies) and have committed to publishing and improving their ethnicity pay gap.
• they attempt in the FAQs to explain that sex is recorded on joining the company in line with HMRC requirements and these other questions are additional voluntary information to understand their people better.
• they mention the protected characteristics and misstate sex as gender (I am pointing this out separately).
• Rather than ignore them, I would like to answer some of the questions, but not the gender identity one. All the fields on the form are mandatory so this isn’t an option. I am suggesting that they remove the mandatory fields as some people might wish to answer some of the questions and some data is better than none. I, in my own role looking at progression through the company, am particularly keen for the ethnicity data to be completed where people are comfortable disclosing it for example.

I like the “I do not believe in gender ideology”, suggestion but suspect it will not be accepted which is why I was suggesting something more directly comparable to the “no religion” option.

I use GDPR for work and you CAN collect information that isn't a protected characteristic (obviously, since otherwise you wouldn't be able to collect job title/shoe size/do you want your coffee black or white) but some categories are special categories and require additional checks. "Gender identity" isn't listed in the ICO list:

ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/lawful-basis-for-processing/special-category-data/

Gender reassignment may be included if it reveals anything about a person's health (including mental health, I'd imagine)

ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/special-category-data/what-is-special-category-data/

Agree with pp. Something along the lines of 'I am an atheist regarding gender ideology'.

(And will politely be not participating in genuflecting at that particular altar.)

They're not asking about gender reassignment, though. They're asking about "gender identity". "Gender identity" is not mentioned on either of the pages linked to above.

They might be able to ask "Have you had legal gender reassignment?" or "Do you have a Gender Recognition Certificate?"

And answering even legitimate equality monitoring questions is entirely voluntary. See ACAS www.acas.org.uk/employer-decision-protected-characteristic/equality-and-diversity

Straight in the bin when I get ono of those.

Our company did this last year (asked for gender identity and not sex) and then proceeded to provide their 'gender pay gap' reports to data.gov based on the former and not the latter.

I think "Prefer Not To Say" was included as an option, so your objection may be seen as being invalid.

We had one of these surveys sent out to all staff, as the company wanted to improve inclusion and diversity, etc. Not all questions were mandatory though, so I completely skipped the gender identity and sexual orientation questions. A significant number of staff didn’t even respond to the email at all, it was voluntary.

Saying no gender . Well there's a gender identity they already made up for that..

n/a option

We had this at work. They asked for gender with a word salad of options so I wrote to them saying that legislation states there are 3 genders - male, female and transgender so if they are collecting data on gender this is all they should use (I'm in Ireland so our equal status act refers to gender). I also stated that if they are trying to improve gender balance (we are after multiple court cases) they need to collect data on the 3 genders listed in legislation.

I got a blah, blah, thank you for feedback, consider it etc but there is no chage.

I've had a few of these questionnaire recently that I have wanted to complete so I went with the other option and stated "I don't have a gender identity but my sex is female".

"I don't have a gender identity but my sex is female".

That's an excellent idea as a response in these types of surveys.