Civil servants tell companies to submit data on pay gap based on gender identity not sex

[IwantToRetire]

Kemi Badenoch pledges to intervene as companies told to collect data based on how workers identify rather than biological sex

All companies with more than 250 staff are required to report their gender pay gap as part of the Government’s aim to end the difference between salaries of both genders.

However, advice published by the Government Equalities Office (GEO), updated in March last year, encourages firms to collect information based on the gender that each employee identifies with.

It means the salaries of biological men could have been recorded as belonging to women, potentially skewing the data.

Kemi Badenoch is understood to have pledged to intervene and is “looking very closely” at what can be done about the guidance to make it clearer that pay gap statistics are meant to record the difference between the biological sexes.

Introductory paragraphs to an article in the Telegraph https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/01/22/trans-row-gender-pay-gap-figures-kemi-badenoch/

Full article can be read at https://archive.ph/NTJai

Come on ladies, what are you whinging about now... look, some of you wimmin are earning similar to the men - no pay gaps here!

It's almost as if nobody saw this coming

God I hope Kemi gets this corrected.
At the moment I'm excluded from my company stats as they only collect HR data on gender, so mine states that I don't have one.
Would be nice not to be excluded from things such as pay gap reporting.

Why are women discriminated against in the work place? Is the primary reason pregnancy or the possibility of pregnancy? And the child care that follows?

Or is it cos they wear a fucking dress and lipstick?

Give me fucking strength.

I've never heard of anything more stupid.

You have. You've been reading the employment tribunal thread...

And there’s the problem with using ‘gender’ not ‘sex’.

I wonder how this will work if a bunch of women have declared themselves as not having a gender identity, and so get bumped in with the special undefineable gender identities that are too precious to be restricted to just the binary options - will that make the stats worse or better?

People might think it doesn’t make any difference because the trans population is a tiny % of the population. But I do our gender pay gap reporting. Majority female workforce but the senior management is closer to 50:50. Despite having 500+ employees, one senior manager transitioning and identifying as a woman would ‘fix’ our fairly typical gender pay gap.

one senior manager transitioning and identifying as a woman would ‘fix’ our fairly typical gender pay gap.

Exactly - and I bet there are a few employers thinking this would be a good tactic to boost their stats.

Honestly believe KB should be kept in Government irrespective of which Party wins, as some sort of women's rights monitor.

But so depressing to realise yet again just how far the creep creep of trans ideology has become embeded in Government.

It might not make a large quantitative difference in most cases where transitioners are not many, but it could in certain positions in, say, the IT industry, where the initial numbers have few women in some jobs and so even one or two males transitioning might up the average pay of that group considerably.

But from a theoretical angle this is a giant problem, because women are discriminated against due to their sex (the possibility of pregnancy) and due to sexism (say, the beliefs that female people are not good at maths and sciences or not suited for management roles or engineering or should not take 'male' jobs in blue-collar industries).

Women are not discriminated against because of wearing makeup or liking pink or having she/her pronouns, and moving to recording 'gender' does suggest that this might be the reason for any average pay differences that may be found.

And the nonbinary category will completely disguise the very likely possibility that female nonbinary people earn less than male nonbinary people for all the reasons mentioned above.

I would imagine the HR department would get the data from payroll (who will have the pay data and sex for HMRC - who I think only deal with sex). So this would surely be extra work for HR to produce.

Do they take the data from payroll or from employee-completed data collection?

This article states
The Government Equalities Office (GEO), which Mrs Badenoch is in charge of, advises firms to be 'sensitive to how an employee identifies their gender'.

'The gender pay gap regulations do not define the terms "men" and "women",' states advice on the Government's website.

It also informs companies that 'if an employee does not self-identify as either gender, you can exclude them from your calculations'.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12995591/Kemi-Badenoch-insist-firms-collect-gender-pay-gap-data-based-biological-sex-civil-servants-said-trans-IDs-used.html

which would imply employees are choosing the data/responses?

But surely that's potentially a form of discrimination, to actively exclude those who don't subscribe to gender ideology?

Wot da fuk?

Same at our place.

(So similar, in fact, that I wonder if it's the same one - or at least same sector.)

Did these civil servants learn nothing from the ONS screw-up over census data?

Oh ffs all the blokes in IT that think they're women will be massively skewing the data.

@SudokuMania I have been asking this at my workplace but they wont give me a straight answer. I have only ever been asked for my gender (at all points from application through to today) and they are fully signed up to self-id. But they state they use biological sex as the basis of our gender pay gap. Can they get data on sex from e.g. our NI number or somewhere else?

It is the same with any thing that adopts 'gender' over 'sex'. It completely obliterates the thing it is there to do.

It makes its very existence completely pointless.

I believe your tax details have a sex marker (not sure if it's in the NI number or the UTR).

I'm never sure of the cross over between Scottish and English law, but its similar to the original court case in Scotland re representation on Company Boards.

Where gender identity was said to qualify you to then be taken to be representative of the opposite sex.

So all of this (over and above Stonewall training) shows that the EA needs to be strengthened in relation to sex as a protected characteristic (and the GRA repealed?).

Thanks @NoBinturongsHereMate That was my hope - because if they are basing it on self identified gender it is a completely pointless exercise. Still not sure why they cannot just tell me that if it is as straight forward an answer as that though !

Me too... I have questioned them how they expect to protect my sex based rights under the UK equality act if they don't know my sex. I'm currently down as "Prefer not to say" which also is incorrect, I have no issue with declaring my views on this.

In my case, I work for a male dominated company and I'm fairly certain that they would look better if my data was included.

And science… In my DH’s university, they’ve even started winning “women in science” awards.

Also, in my organisation (public sector) we’ve been told that transwomen count as women for the purposes of avoiding all-male interview shortlists. This has resulted in a very senior role having three male and one transwoman invited to interview (and no female candidates - despite our policy on avoiding all-male shortlists).

Transwomen are also able to take places on female talent schemes and receive mentoring from a senior female (all intended to increase female representation in senior positions)

Does anyone know if there’s been any progress with this? I’ve just had a quick look at the official guidance, then found this thread.

I wonder how, therefore, any company that does not ask for how individuals’ identify can report accurately. And if they do ask and employees state they do not identify with anything (like I would) they are presumably excluded, thus again false reporting.

Another example why language is so important and surely the term gender pay gap needs to be changed.