Work HR: Preferred Pronouns are mandatory

[MoreThanAFeline]

Name changed for this. I wanted to update my address on the HR system at work. The instructions on how to do this say that something simple like updating an address can be done easily and that each section can be independently accessed.

When I try to click to the address part of the form, I get the attached error message.
Preferred Pronouns are apparently mandatory. My 'gender identity' is mandatory. My 'trans status' is mandatory. Sex is not asked for anywhere.

My workplace is supposed to be run by grown ups. How depressing.

Your employer is a university and they can’t spell Buddhist??

It's the wrong, unimportant, kind of diversity

My employer is also now making pronouns on email signatures compulsory. Previously 'encouraged to show support for LGBTQA+ colleagues' but not mandatory.

I'm thinking of asking to join the inclusion champions next meeting as a guest to tell them I don't agree with it and why. But I'm not sure how it would go😬

This is a really bad policy that unfairly impacts women who are often undermined when it is obvious they are women during interactions. This us shown again and again when the same email is sent from a male named account and a female named one.

I would want to push back, but I think you need to be careful. Goid luck @belgiumchocolates

Agreed. I'd be asking to see the DPIA.

You would think organisations would be very wary of collecting this data. I can't see why they need it, and it is highly sensitive data so if there was a data breach it would be a serious one

All UK HE institutions are required to submit a staff data return to HESA each year. This is an individual record for each staff member. The HESA staff data specification includes some special category data such as gender identity, sexuality etc.

There are two separate questions relating to gender identity - one on 'trans' for Scotland which is optional to return, and one on 'gender identity' which is compulsory to return for institutions in England and Wales, optional for Northern Ireland.

The options for gender identity are:

Q: Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?

Yes
No
Prefer not to say
Not available

Definitions:

Prefer not to say – staff member doesn’t want to declare the information.
Not available – the provider is not able to get this data in order to send it to HESA.

Scotland has a separate question about trans:

Q: Do you consider yourself to be trans, or have a trans history?

Yes
No
Prefer not to say
Not available

I'd ask why Prefer not to say isn't presented as an option in your system at the very least.

Oh, and preferred pronouns is not (yet!) part of the HESA data collection.

The questions about data collection and processing still apply, whether the questions come from HESA or the individual university.

I always tick “other” and write British

Which Christian denomination are you?

Catholic
Methodist
Baptist
Church of England
Other
Prefer not to say

If you are a Muslim the option ‘prefer not to say’ actually means you prefer not to say which Christian denomination you are. Even ‘other’ indicates you are declaring you have an ‘other’ Christian denomination.

Well what a depressing rabbit hole this has turned out to be.

So, yes, the Higher Education Statistics Agency does indeed demand a huge amount of data on 'characteristics' - most of which are not EA2010 Protected Characteristics, and some, such as 'Gender Identity' are obviously controversial at best, yet this government agency takes the existence of gender identity as an absolutely given fact.

Here is the list of what Higher Education Institutions (so Universities, basically) must send them every year.
https://www.hesa.ac.uk/collection/c22025/index
If an institution does not do this, they can be prevented from taking on students etc. So this nonsense is coming from government agencies (albeit eagerly followed by HR departments)

Interesting that 'Gender Identity', 'Transgender status', 'Sexual identification' are all listed (but NB the ridiculous framing: sexual identification says 'This field records the sex of the member of staff', so why 'identification'? That's right: because you have to put 'identification' in all these things otherwise gender ideology collapses under its own ridiculousness).

But look: the best practice recommendation is that the 'Transgender' question is asked every year.
But the trans question should be asked alongside the 'sex' question. So this rather raises the question of why my employer does not ask about 'sex' at all.

Preferred pronouns are, of course, nowhere to be found on this list. What on earth could they tell anyone? How can you tell the female "she/her"s from the male "she/her"s?

So yes, I will try to take this further. Showed some of this to a colleague who has not previously paid any of this any real attention, and he was perplexed with lots of pulling faces and head scratching before saying that something seems wrong here and he was going to start finding out about it too.

Make sure not to register for a website.

I have one with GoDaddy and one of the emails I got from tech help has their pronouns in it.

Ah so sex could have been included and should have been alongside the trans question.

I'm going to raise this with a trusted colleague in my workplace.

It seems to be everywhere. I recently refused permission for DC to take part in a school survey sent out by the council (Scotland) because it only referenced gender identity. I wrote to the school and told them why.

The only time I'm asked about biological sex is when doing an econsult at my GP.

Not surprisingly they don't require you to state how many motorhomes you own and whether it's parked at your MIL's, @Morethanafeline 😉

Any news on this OP?

How are you getting on?

I hate all this. Fortunately my work hasn't insisted. If it did I'd probably write:

"I don't have a gender identity. My biological sex is female".

I like @GreenMonty response:

"I didn't believe in gender identity and only see myself in terms of biological sex."