Supporting Gender Critical Employees

[Spannerintheworx]

Not sure if this should be in employment or here, so apologise if in the wrong area.

I am a middle manager in a large organisation.

I have contacted the equality and diversity department twice now regarding advice on how to support employees with Gender Critical Beliefs (not that anyone dares voice them) as I want GC employees to feel they are supported.

The organisation is very much pro Transgender and wants all employees to show support by using pronouns in their emails and rainbow badges, lanyards etc, this is a request and not mandatory but is pressure nonetheless.

I would ideally like to develop a peer support group within the organisation for folk with GC beliefs hence my contact with E and D.

Peer support groups are common practice in the organisation and in existence for other groups who are covered under the Equality and Diversity Act.

I have had no response from the E + D team.

Does anyone have any advice, have you had similar experiences please?

I dont want to leave this, but I am not sure what to do next.

Have you looked in to how your company collects statistics on how to measure the pay gap. Lots of Stonewall influenced companies have removed the capture of sex and replaced it with gender identity. Or they may have a trans inclusive policy which ignores the right of lesbians and women on the basis of sexuality, sex and potentially religion.
If they've done this then you have a good starting point to wanting to have a discussion about their legal ramifications and how they may be at risk of discriminating employees, if they don't capture sex information in records then a case of sex discrimination will be lost by them within 5 minutes

What I was going to add before posting is that this should get the attention of the Diversity team if they have a tenth of a brain.
Say you wish them to set up a working group which looks at all of the 9 protected characteristics . You beliefs fall under "religion / belief" and it is discriminatory for them to ignore this.

Tough one. Are you settled, performing well in your job? You don't want this to be an excuse for you to be sacked.

Good luck op. I wish there was someone like you at my company

yeah don't expect people to 'out' themselves as GC if in other ways the firm still feels captured.

As a first step make sure company policy is clear on protecting women and treating 'sex' as the protected attribute it is.

Then make sure sexual orientation is recognised as a protected characteristic. And that no bullying or criticism of employees would ever be tolerated based on who they are or aren't sexually attracted to.

Then write a policy ostensibly about religion which sets out a clear and consistently enforceable position on respecting people who do not share your beliefs/religion.