Oxford Uni told to reveal Stonewall’s LGBT diversity scores

[Imnobody4]

This cheered me up after the Labour Party thread.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/497f425a-f93a-11ec-84c1-32e852e780b0?shareToken=939740c8ae4f08fcf8342e1e4ca941ce

Oxford University will be forced to reveal the scores and feedback it received from the LGBT charity Stonewall as part of its controversial workplace scheme.

In the case of Oxford, the commissioner ruled there was a real risk that the Stonewall scheme could be abused if the scores and recommendations were not made transparent.John Edwards said it was in the public interest to reveal what the charity told public bodies to do to win its stamp of approval as an LGBT-friendly employer.

Happy day!

likewise, happy days. let see what the rest of the universities have to say. should be very interesting reading, I suspect Stonewall and the universities will not want to reveal what they say they have to do to increase the ranking. i suspect it will reveal policy as Stonewall would like it rather than the policy as legally stated.

Well given the MOJ places male rapists in womens prisons and still only made it to 5th place on the rankings everyone who pays stonewall for their " advice " should be asking what on earth has to be done to achieve a place in the top 4 and do they really want to do it.

It absolutely should be made open , let everyone see what it is stonewall advises. There's nothing to hide right? Not like the advice conflicts with evere protected characteristic bar 1 is it...

Await with interest...and other universities should take note.

This is good news. The last paragraph of the Times article quotes an Oxford University spokesman saying that the information will be provided. I assume this means they won't appeal. Hopefully, all the other FOI recipients who used commercial confidentiality not to comply will now do so.

Ooh this could be interesting!

Watching with interest.

I think the generic stuff like introduce pronouns and introduce gender neutral language into policies we know about, i think it will be the org specific advice that will be where the gold is. What did they say to MOJ About prisons, the beeb about editorial policy, sussex uni about prof stock?

Presumably they're going to be exposed for removing single sex facilities, language mangling, prioritising trans over all the other relevant protected characteristics and silencing free speech?

This is fantastic news. It does not sound like Oxford is going to appeal, which means that all the government departments will have to decide whether to go along with the ICO decision or refuse in the knowledge that they will have to go above the ICO and into the court system in the hope of the courts overruling the ICO - that is not something to take on lightly.

Great news, especially the intention of Oxford to comply with the ICO ruling. The article also mentions the Department for Education withdrawing from the SW diversity champions protection racket, which I hadn't seen confirmed in the media before.

How did stonewall infiltrate virtually every establishment and business unchallenged?
Future dictators could learn a lot from its methods.

While we carefully consider the feedback from Stonewall, we have always treated it as advisory only and have not always followed it.”

Ooh, on the defensive already....

Stonewall said: “Our diversity champions programme and Workplace Equality Index are voluntary initiatives designed to support organisations to create more inclusive workplaces for their LGBTQ+ employees. It is hard to make a case that anyone is adversely affected by small tweaks that make HR policies more inclusive, such as for example replacing ‘mother’ or ‘father’ with ‘parent’ to ensure same-sex couples enjoy the same childcare benefits as straight couples.”

What does Stonewall think same-sex couples have to do with anything? Do they think someone's sex is important now? Can a same-sex couple not be straight if one is trans?

It's in the Glinner email too

It's not on the ICO's website yet . Give it a couple of weeks, I suppose. They'll all have to do it now, I presume.

Stonewall said: “Our diversity champions programme and Workplace Equality Index are voluntary initiatives designed to support organisations to create more inclusive workplaces for their LGBTQ+ employees. It is hard to make a case that anyone is adversely affected by small tweaks that make HR policies more inclusive, such as for example replacing ‘mother’ or ‘father’ with ‘parent’ to ensure same-sex couples enjoy the same childcare benefits as straight couples.” So altering the meaning of words and the language used to describe things is a "small tweak"? Like fuck is it.

Yes, but only if someone submits an FOI request and provided there are no material differences that would mean the ICO might take a different view. However, government departments or other organisations can still refuse to refuse the info and wait until told they have to buy the ICO, but I think that would be frowned upon.

‘It is hard to make a case that anyone is adversely affected by small tweaks that make HR policies more inclusive, such as for example replacing ‘mother’ or ‘father’ with ‘parent’ to ensure same-sex couples enjoy the same childcare benefits as straight couples.’

It’s not. Two males do not need to have their health needs during pregnancy taken into account. They don’t breastfeed. They don’t experience sex-based discrimination when they start a family.

As I recall, hygiene ratings are made available routinely now after an FOI case about commercial interests. One council lost the argument and they all routinely publish it now without a fight.

I'd like Stonewall to reveal how much they have been paid by taxpayers via various Govt departments, and what we received for that.

I want to know how we set up a feminist equality pressure group slash advisory body in the same model that the institutions will so easily and instantly obey.

Well won't that be interesting.

Well apparently it has to start with a group of largely white, straight, affluent, educated, able bodied men, which is a problem when you're looking for a group who genuinely have an interest in women's rights. And then you need a heck of a lot of government funding and a lot of wealthy backers in powerful positions.

Ffs, you'd think all these extremist right wing Americans funding all this would have got their act together by now, it's almost like they don't exist and that's why we're crowd funding justice a fiver at a time and tying ribbons to things. Although that does seem to be enough to make poundshop ninjas appear.

Slightly off topic, fascinating/appalling article on how a London hospital judged tenders for stoma care. 5 out of 35 questions that each company had to complete were based on Stonewall compliance and this is over the % they are allowed to ask with regard to ALL such let's say fringe matters

TWEAK! TWEAK! FFS.
Meanwhile will this bolster Allison Bailey's case do we think?