Help me with message to HR

[Yoursmineandours]

The company I work for is about to launch a DEI activity designed to capture data that will enable them to gain quantitative insights into the company’s DEI landscape. I have no issue with any of this, nor do I have any concerns about how the data will be collected, handled, stored etc.

However, they seemingly intend to ask questions regarding Gender, and regarding Gender Identity, but not Sex. The survey has not yet launched so I have an opportunity to challenge, but I am struggling with articulating one particular point. Can you help finish this sentence?

………….

Excluding “sex” as an option, but allowing for “gender” as well as “gender identity and expression” risks excluding those people who don’t …. Believe in gender? Care for gender stereotypes?

…………

Any wordage gratefully received.

HR Director here. At best, they will already hold that data as it's mandatory for every HR and payroll system I've ever used. It's not something they would need to recollect.

At worst, they don't know the difference between sex and gender. I would call rather than email though.

Mine have done this, They presented it as voluntary but there's a huge amount of pressure to do it and also managers are being told to encourage staff to do it ( we keep getting percentage completed kpis). the argument is that you can taick don't want to say so completion isn't an issue ,
Its not just gender though to be fair- they have things like culture - i have no idea what they mean by culture
our is global so i'm not sure of equality act comparisons

@Missproportionate yes it should be sex pay gap. This is a classic case of using gender as a euphemism for sex.

The gender pay gap regulations do not define the terms ‘men’ and ‘women’.

I though it was long established case law that where legislation does not define a word, the commonly accepted (i.e. dictionary) definition is used.

The equality Act states both 'sex' and 'gender reassignment', surely any data capture should comply with this Act.

It’s ridiculous for euphemisms to be used in regulatory documents and such. They could even have called it something like ‘opposite sex pay gap’ if they didn’t want to put just ‘sex pay gap’ though I don’t think that should be necessary.

@BlackBean2023 may I ask if there’s a particular reason why you suggest phoning rather than emailing?

“At worst, they don't know the difference between sex and gender. I would call rather than email though.”

I would phrase it as protecting the company from legal ramifications if they choose to exclude one (,or more) protected characteristics stated in an act of parlement and them changing the wording of said act (which is not allowed, you can add additional characteristics but not change the 9 main ones as each of them has legal definitions for law making purposes).

It's a good point that companies may already have the sex data but there are a few important questions about that.

Did they record it as sex or gender?

They have gender as a question, do they mean sex or is this information on top of the sex stats they have?

The questionnaire type is important here. Asking about sex may be relevant/important in context with other questions. E.g. females may be more likely to have a disability, men may be more likely to identify as something other then male. This could have a big impact on services that need to be provided (eg more disabled toilets in women's loos, more mixed sex toilets, but it depends how the results are collated. This data won't be captured if the info is simply collated as 40 women, 50men and 10 nbs for example.

Given that the Cambridge Dictionary definition of 'woman' is "an adult who lives and identified as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth" , I don't think that's going to help much.

@Skyellaskerry the Cabinet Office along with ONS has measured the sex pay gap of Civil Servants for decades(1979s?) They always used gender rather than sex.

Similarly the language used for the wider public sector and private and voluntary sectors was also gender pay gap.

This all pre-dated the redefining of gender so it was no longer a euphemism for sex so the term carried through into the legislation.

How can they tell if someone is being discriminated against because they are trans if they don't collect data that shows gender identity doesn't match birth sex? 😉

You say there is no ill intent but if the DEI framework will be formed from the outputs of this survey, it is likely to completely ignore equity / equality between the sexes.

Maybe
I am concerned about the absence of dtata collection on sex and its potential implication for the focus of the DEI framework.

While gender identity is important in the context of DEI and can also be very delicate from a political and personal perspective, the focus on gender identity risks ignoring the challenges faced by women in the work place which are entirely due to their biological sex.

At X company,, the board is comprised of X males and Y females, females dominate the areas of M and N which are lower paid than male dominated S and P. Unconscious sex based biased behaviours are common and cannot be addressed if the company does not recognise the importance of the female sex class as a factor in Diversity, Inclusion and Equality / Equity (which ever form of 'E' they use).

Gender identity is not something that is held by all individuals. This has been established by case law. Individuals who do not hold a gender identity, should not be discriminated against, for example, the requirement to declare pronouns and it's implied belief that this relates to gender identity and not sex.

Where sex is the determining factor, for example time off for pregnany and post partum childcare and the consequential impact on salary and career progression or menturation and the requirement to have access to sex segregated toilets, it is important to recognise sex rather than gender identity.

@Chersfrozenface and @SerendipityJane the Gender Pay Gap Regulations use Male and Female not man and woman which I believe makes a subtle difference.

We need an Academie Anglaise

@Luckydog7

The DWP has removed 'sex' too. I've informed them they say it is fine. Any idea where I can find info to show it is ilegal?

"Excluding 'sex' as an option, but allowing for 'gender' as well as 'gender identity and expression,' risks overlooking the experiences and identities of individuals who may see their biological sex as a significant aspect of their identity separate from gender constructs, or who may not fully identify with or within the contemporary spectrum of gender identities and expressions. This could inadvertently marginalize those whose experiences and self-identification are closely tied to their biological sex, rather than their gender or gender identity, and could result in a less comprehensive understanding of the diverse perspectives within our company."

If they are likely to already hold the data on sex, and probably ethnicity, and obviously disability due to having to make adjustments, then what exactly is the point of this activity?

No employer has full data on ethnicity or disability, because both of these rely on self declaration. They therefore end up trying to gather via self declaration forms, often at regular intervals, and they look to gather data on other protected characteristics at at the same time.

No employer has full data on ethnicity or disability, because both of these rely on self declaration.

But what if people lie ?

Well, some may. But I'm not sure it makes any difference given there is no method of getting definitive data on either of those categories.

If you can lie, there must be an objective answer, surely ?

(No one has ever satisfactorily explained this to me in well over 40 years)

Most employers have been asking for a declaration at the start of employment for the last 20 odd years.

If they have done fine so far without this information, then the point is, why is it being collected now and what are they going to do with it?

Most employers have been asking for a declaration at the start of employment for the last 20 odd years.

More like 40 ...

@sashh if is DWP defiitely send them this link https://osr.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/publication/collecting-and-reporting-data-about-sex-and-gender-identity-in-official-statistics-a-guide-for-official-statistics-producers/

The idea is to find out how many men, women and non-binary people there are, and how many transgender people there are without upsetting gender critical people or everyone else, while not confusing people who aren't waist deep in the debate.

If gender critical people put n/a or none for gender identity, they are going to get bad data, because not having a gender identity, if you aren't GC, means that you are non-binary. So, a GC person might say I am a woman, but I don't have a gender identity. That doesn't make them non-binary, it just means they don't believe in gender identity. This makes it a bad question.

You could ask "Sex on original birth certificate"

And then ask if they are transgender, and if so, what is their gender identity, as another poster suggested.

This would collect all the data on the gender reassignment/sex protected characteristics, hopefully without offending or confusing anyone.

This does leave out intersex people, which could be a separate question.

DEI data collection should be optional and anonymised.