Sex Equality and Equity Network - Gender crit network for civil servants.

[fromorbit]

Important new initiative for government workers. This is where a huge fight back is going to happen in behind the scenes government, in memos and meetings. If we don't win in the civil service, it doesn't matter how many demos or cases we win, how many twitter threads we write, sooner or later sex differences will be erased. If you work in government/public sector get involved asp.

seen-network.uk/

"We are happy to announce the launch of our new UK cross-government staff network, the Sex Equality and Equity Network.
SEEN is a staff network committed to promoting and supporting sex equality and equity between women and men in our workplaces, and helping all staff to thrive at work and fulfil their potential. The focus of our network is on challenging sex discrimination and upholding rights and protections that relate to sex (including the protections provided to those with the protected characteristics of sex, pregnancy and maternity and sexual orientation, as set out in the Equality Act 2010). We recognise that to achieve this and ensure sex equality and equity sometimes requires treating women and men differently, according to our different rights and needs.

We are also committed to the protected belief (covered by the protected characteristic of religion and belief in the Equality Act 2010) that biological sex is binary and immutable, that biological sex matters for both women and men in our everyday lives, including for our rights and needs in the workplace, and that biological sex must not be conflated with, or replaced by, the concepts of gender or gender identity."

I can't tell you how glad I am that there are a few of us! The poster who challenged on the yammer thread said if the comments had been about any other protected characteristic, there would have been disciplinary action taken immediately.

They just can't see their bigotry. It really is scary.

I've just wasted most of my lunchbreak poking around on yammer but can't see the thread in question. Can someone who can see it pm me the topic it is in (or even just which part of the civil service) If it is in my part, I am already speaking to a senior leader in my area about some of the problems with the attitudes towards GC views so it would be very helpful to be able to point to it.

Many thanks

Where can I find details of the board for this network? Every other staff network I’ve been a part of in the past as a civil servant has had champions, chair, secretary etc but I can’t find any information for this one which makes me doubt it’s validity as an official network. I’m VERY reluctant to add my work email address to something unless it’s confirmed as legit.

emsyj37, whistlingtax, hoarderoffacts, zen 1

Please could you let me know if any of you would be happy for me to pm you with a location question. I am specifically trying to track down a person (not a specific person, just any one person) I might share a location with but I would prefer not to post my location on here.

Many thanks

Great news. For those who wish to join, it does seem to be limited to civil service and ALBs/agencies:

"We restrict our responses to membership enquiries to official UK government email addresses (central government departments, agencies, and their associated public bodies including arm’s length bodies)."

Not wider public sector unfortunately.

Hi, yes of course

Yes of course

Tried to join with my NHS email but it the online form doesn’t go through?

Happy to be contacted via PM

Me too

Think it's civil service and ALBs, not wider public sector.

See HotPenguin's response

Test

Great - name change happened. I noticed that the equality training in FCDO uses ‘gender’ instead of ‘sex’ when listing the protected characteristics in the Equalities Act. I raised the error and had absolutely nothing back. If even government can’t describe their own legislation correctly, we NEED this group!

I am also nervous of joining, which is pretty bloody terrifying really. But I will :)

Are you sure that local .gov addresses won’t be accepted?

"We restrict our responses to membership enquiries to official UK government email addresses (central government departments, agencies, and their associated public bodies including arm’s length bodies)."

This doesn't include LAs. Would love to see networks spring up which do encompass other bits of the public sector, but it would make this network an oddity among other CS networks in terms of admitting a much wider membership, whereas what I think it really needs to do is stand on a par with them.

I hadn't heard anything about this until reading it on here. Anticipate voices of fury within my Department too. Not sure how visible I want to be (am sure that my unusual overlap of LGBT network member + no pronouns on email sig has been noted by some) but really excited this has been set up and will def join.

Almost makes me wish I still worked in the civil service. Almost.
Good luck all. Would love to know how many members there are.

It’s great that it exists but I’m not sure how many people will have the balls to join it. In my departments I’m surrounded by people who think it should be about gender equality, not sex. About a year ago our “womens network” was renamed the “gender equality network”. And a lot of people have optionally out their preferred pronouns in their e-mail footer. The rot has well and truly set in.

I wonder how different the difference departments are on this stuff? Definitely more pronouns in signatures in my new one when I moved.

*different the departments

Thank you. I plan to pass this on to helpful colleagues.

Well done.

I won't join yet. Our D&I policy doesn't even mention sex. Only gender.