I need help taking a complaint further.

[sashh]

Do you remember I complained to the council about their consultation asking for 'gender ID'? Well today I got a reply. And I am not happy - please read and comment.

Corporate Stage 1 Complaint

Thank you for your recent complaint regardingquestions relating to gender as part of our equality monitoring. I apologise that you are dissatisfied with the service you have received from the City of Wolverhampton Council. I am sorry that on this occasion the service we provided did not meet your expectations; I have investigated what happened and can now reply as follows:

On your question about why the Council ask questions about gender identity, and why it is relevant, as part of the Public Sector Equality Duty, The City of Wolverhampton Council has a responsibility to ensure that we do not unfairly discriminate in the services we currently provide, or plan to provide. Therefore, by asking equality monitoring questions as part of our consultations, we can break down the responses we receive and assess whether any protected characteristics will be unfairly treated because of the proposal being consulted on and plan suitable adjustments accordingly.

The Equality Act 2010 recognises gender reassignment as a protected characteristic which has not changed following the Supreme Court ruling of For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers. We ask questions about gender so we can identify responses from this equality group to see if they are engaging with our consultations and check if this protected characteristic have identified any adverse impact in their response. This is why asking questions around gender is relevant.

Furthermore, our equality monitoring questions were developed to align with the questions asked as part of the Census 2021, which enables us to check if the responses we receive are representative of the diverse makeup of the City of Wolverhampton. As part of the Census 2021 individual questionnaire, question 27 was focussed on gender and therefore, this is another reason we ask a similar question as part of our monitoring.

On your concern about ensuring accuracy without a I don’t have a gender identity option, our equality monitoring questions are not usually mandatory on Citizen Space, so questions don’t need to be answered where someone feels the question is not relevant to their identity. Additionally, each will have a prefer not to say option to allow people to opt out of questions they don’t feel comfortable answering.

Therefore, we do not uphold the element of your complaint that we are discriminating against you or not processing your data correctly by including questions on gender in our consultations as there are opportunities to abstain from questions you do not want to answer.

On your question on why the Council does not ask questions about pregnancy or maternity, the council aligns our equality monitoring questions with the Census 2021, where the only question relating to maternity was an employment-based question which wouldn’t be relevant for the Council to ask as we do not gather data on employment as part of our equality monitoring questions on consultations.

If you are dissatisfied with this response and would like to request a further investigation, please contact the Customer Liaison Team in writing within 20 working days from the date of this letter as follows:

So far I have got that they didn't ask about gender reassignment, that 'gender ID' is a political stance as identified in Linzi Smith's case and as such the council should not be promoting it.

I’m so tired of all of this. You might not believe people feel differently to you but they do. I think the council’s response is entirely fair. The UK is trying to give everyone as many rights as they can without trampling on other people’s rights. Give it a rest.

Don't be ridiculous, how is asking about 'gender ID' fair? It is not a protected characteristic, it is a political position.

That's the point though gender identity is not a protected characteristic. It says nothing about whether someone has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment so they are actually failing to identify their target group with the question actually asked. So how do they identify those with gender reassignment?

Maybe they are trying to work out how to organise the new loos to keep you lot happy!

As ‘gender identity’ is not a protected characteristic, people either a ‘gender identity’ have the same rights as everyone r else.

OP is right, this is a nonsense response that doesn’t address the issue she has raised and the council is in breach of GDPR by gathering non essential data for no good reason.

OP, afaik gathering this data is a breach of GDPR rules and would have been stopped if the ICO was doing its job properly. They may have resolved this in light of the SC judgement so might be worth enlightening the council and reporting the breach.

By ‘you lot’, do you mean women? That’s a rather unpleasant response.

No, because I am a woman! I mean people who are constantly trying to stir up trouble over this. I just want you to know there are women who don’t agree with you.

So they don't ask about sex at all?

Stir up trouble? Male toilets, female toilets and accessible toilets for disabled. Doesn't need to be any more complicated than that.

OP I'd definitely drag their attention to the actual protected characteristics in the Equality Act not the Stonewall wishful thinking ones. I agree Linzi Smith's win also is pertinent.

But what is wrong for trying to ascertain how many people are trans who use their service?

That question wasn't for you. I can't have children but I wouldn't be upset if asked questions relating to whether I had them or not.

I don't see why you can't just opt out of that question. Trans people do exist and the council has every right to find out what they think and if they're being catered for.

@DiscoBob

The thing is that "prefer not to say", or not answering the questions allows greater chance for the results to misinterpreted.
It is not a big request for companies to put in a box for "I do not have a gender identity".
Especially in the modern world where most of these are electronic, and even where printed copied are made the questions should be reviewed and adapted.

I've not seen the actual question but if they ONLY ask about gender ID and not about sex at birth they wont be able to tell who's trans, or indeed how many male or female people there are. Might as well ask for starsign as for gender ID on its own, really.

The only reason your aware of 'this' is because you come on this thread, if you stop coming on this thread you could stop being sick. Simples.

I find myself idly wondering if rather than individual complaints (which are intended to be ignored) a slightly different approach might be to make an FOI request, asking for a breakdown by protected characteristics.

When they return with a load of "Gender" bollocks, then progress the request to the ICO and made noises about the authority failing to collect and maintain accurate personal details as required by GDPR. This then becomes a statutory process for the entire data set, rather than one easily fobbed off individual ?

I am sure there are genuine legal minds who could advise if this makes sense.

Alternatively (or additionally) there is still scope for an individual to require the authority to correct the data they hold and excise the supernumerary "gender" shite and either replace it with "sex" or just fuck off and die.

‘Stir up trouble’?

So you’re happy with a status quo that places male rapists in women’s prisons, pervy men on female only wards with vulnerable women and men in lipstick and a dress in M&S lingerie section approaching seemingly unaccompanied young girls to ask them if they need help choosing lingerie?

Because that’s where the nonsense described in OP takes us. Breaches of GDPR, harmful discrimination against women and unscientific fact free nonsense spread throughout society.

You may not have realised how it harms you and your rights as a woman but we have.

It might help form
your response by looking at and quoting the December 2023 Public Sector Equality Duty update on Gov.Uk.
There is also the Sullivan Review on data collection in the census which is also useful to quote at them.
Sorry I can’t link to them - on holiday with little
wifi, Google will help though.

Well suck it up. This isn't going away until we have removed this nonsense from all our public bodies.

This

From the OP

On your question on why the Council does not ask questions about pregnancy or maternity,

So are you also happy that the council may well discriminate against or fails to provide adequate services for pregnancy/maternity?

Are we ‘stirring up trouble’ in trying to advocate for them?

What exactly about women’s rights do you disagree with?

It won't be gender ID only. They need legal sex as a basic demographic. It does not say that's the case so don't assume it.

I think OP has gone over the top about saying the response isn't adequate. Why shouldn't they ask that question?

I'm assuming it relates to this which was the OP's original post. TBF to the council, they probably think they are capturing that data, but it seems full of holes. Not least because a transwoman (for example) could put male or female for the first question, which would bugger the rest of the questions up

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5374509-gender-id-on-a-housing-allocation-policy-consultation

People with a ‘gender identity’ have the same rights as the rest of us.

What more right do you want them to have?

Do you think that the council should ignore the rights of pregnancy and maternity?

That’s not in the list of essential data they can legally hold in someone for GDPR.

The design of Census 2021 was widely criticised, resulted in problematic responses and shamefully lost the ONS a valuable international accreditation. This was almost entirely the result of the questions about gender which many if not most respondents struggled to understand. It was widely reported and widely condemned. I’m amazed that anyone who has anything to do with survey design not only uses it but publicly admits to basing their own surveys on it. Pre-2021 that would have been normal practice. Post, given the issues, it really should not be.

Do they ask about sex?