If you recognise me don't put me please.
I've drafted a letter. Can you critique it please.
There have recently been a number of changes to the email signatures that appear to require all employees to include preferred pronouns whenever they identify themselves. I am, of course, committed to equality, diversity, and inclusion and wholly support a person’s right to be called by the gender pronoun of their choosing. I am also aware that the goal of this policy is to remove the stigma from a trans or non-binary person’s pronoun declaration; however, I believe that making this mandatory (or at the very least, inferred as mandatory) in email signatures for all employees raises other concerns which should be considered.
Mandating that all employees make this information public is an unnecessary invasion of privacy. If a person is worried about being referred to by the wrong pronoun, they may choose to make their preferred pronoun known. It is, nevertheless, important to note that there are many people who, for various legitimate reasons, do not wish to declare their pronoun or gender identity.
Some people wish to transition, but do not wish to make this information public. Some people have never adopted a gender identity and do not wish to, such as myself. Some will be opposed to the idea of gender identity for religious reasons. Some may simply feel their self-identification is no one else’s business.
The right to have gender critical beliefs (the belief that sex is binary, real, immutable and important), and a lack of belief in gender-identity ideology (the belief that everyone has a gender identity which is on a spectrum and may be fixed or fluid, and that this should override their physical sex) are both protected under the Equality Act 2010 protection against direct and indirect discrimination based on belief (including lack of belief), as recently affirmed in the case of Forstater v CGD Europe & Others. Employees are entitled to refuse to take part in any request to state their pronouns, and to be protected from discrimination, harassment and victimisation for refusing so to do.
People who consider themselves transgender but who have not taken steps to transition, and who are not ‘out’ in the workplace (that is, still present as their birth sex but feel like the opposite sex, or some other identity, inside) can also feel discomfort by being asked to state their pronouns.
Under the Yogyakarta Principles, Principle 6, The Right to Privacy, Principle 6(f) states that:
States shall:
Ensure the right of all persons ordinarily to choose when, to whom and how to disclose information pertaining to their sexual orientation or gender identity, and protect all persons from arbitrary or unwanted disclosure, or threat of disclosure of such information by others.
Whilst we are not a state, surely it is incumbent upon us, as responsible employers who wish to uphold the privacy and dignity of employees, to abide by this principle?
Furthermore, under GDPR and UKGDPR, the employer-employee situation is generally considered as an imbalanced relationship in which the employer wields more power than the employee. Since consent has to be freely given, and in light of the imbalanced relationship, in most cases an employer cannot rely on consent to process employee data. In addition, this data is sensitive personal data, as it has the potential to infer religious beliefs (covering gender critical beliefs and a lack of belief in gender ideology as discussed above), as well as sexual life (transgender or non-binary status), then an additional safeguard under Article 9 GDPR and UKGDPR. These additional basis for processing that apply to XXX are:
Consent
Field of employment and social security law
Vital interests
Information manifestly made public by the data subject
Defence of legal claims or court-related
Substantial public interest
The only one of these which would apply to mandating pronouns is consent, and as discussed above, I do not believe, given the imbalance of power between employee and employer, that it is appropriate to use this basis.
To ensure that we remain inclusive for all employees, I believe that we must continue to respect the privacy of the workforce, whilst at the same time allowing people who wish to present a particular gender identity to do so. The most effective way to do this is to make pronoun declaration and gender identification a matter of personal preference, and not have it included in template email signatures. This way, no person is forced to share information they do not wish to share, and anyone who wishes to declare their gender and state a preferred pronoun may do so, should they wish to.