EDI and REF28

[Femaleismysex]

Name change for this. I could not find an academic thread on the strange behaviour of next REF exercise.

I am really shocked that the REF28, which supposedly places a greater focus on EDI continues to conflate sex and gender as stated on page 3, point 2 of this doc. Is this just the case of the universities that remain under the Stonewall spell? https://ref.ac.uk/publications-and-reports/equality-and-diversity-advisory-panel-final-report/

how can we raise awareness without risking one’s job?

This is the text:”At the outset, however, it is important to comment on some of the terminology adopted in this report. There are several ongoing debates across the equality landscape on the usage of various words, phrases, and / or acronyms. Appropriate usage of sex and gender has received particular attention. In a nutshell, sex refers to the biological status of a person as male or female. In contrast, gender refers to cultural and social distinctions between men and women, and is often preferred as it is a more inclusive term and allows for non-binary identification. In practice, the two terms are often used interchangeably. In this report, gender is used throughout apart from when discussing potential or actual impacts on groups with particular protected characteristics (e.g. in institutional Equality Impact Assessments, where many analyses are based on employment data” REF21 however they intend to maintain that definition for the REF28.

So they're erasing the ability of academics to consider how anything affects women as a sex class?

Are we in Afghanistan?

The cynic in me would say this approach shores up Stonewalled EDI practices in the most ardent universities. Universities fall over themselves to outdo one another in REF. If you measure performance against the protected characteristics as the sector wishes them to be, rather than what the law actually says, there is a perverse incentive to stick with the wonky version. It may harden practice in the sector when other sectors are waking up to risks of making up the law as they go and retreating. The relevant minister should step in and make sure they do it properly, with reference to EA2010. (Of course you could probably count the universities actually recording sex so they can report on it on one hand, such is the fervour for right think.)