LGBT Excellence Centre Unleashing Wales’ Potential - Empowering Communities to Flourish
Guidance on Monitoring Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Whether in employment, training, recruitment, or in the provision of goods facilities and services, monitoring of equal opportunities information as become an important exercise in order to identify the barriers that some people might face and improve performance for organisations. Nevertheless, monitoring should be executed as part of a clear strategy around addressing equality and human rights issues and this should be clearly communicated to your target audience in order to explain why you are gathering this information. People filling in the form might be particularly concerned with confidentiality and data protection issues, so you should make sure to explain who is going to see the information disclosed, how the information is going to be used, how it will be stored, and what you are going to do once the data as been analysed. Remember that monitoring should always be a voluntary and anonymous exercise and you should clearly state this at the beginning of your form. Whilst gender identity and sexual orientation are totally different matters, there are some similar issues to address and consider whilst embarking on a monitoring exercise. Gender identity relates to the gender that someone identifies as. This might be different to what gender this person might have been assigned at birth and sometimes people have more than one gender or change their gender according to life circumstances. The British legal system currently only recognises male and female, but some other countries and cultures recognise as many as 27 different genders. Sexual orientation relates to the sex or gender that someone is emotionally or sexually attracted to. This includes being attracted to people of the opposite gender, people of the same gender, people of both genders, and people of neither gender. Whilst many believe that asking questions about gender identity and sexual orientation can be tricky or that it should be a private matter, monitoring these characteristics is fundamental when trying to appraise if an organisation is complying with statutory duties and anti-discrimination legislation. Let’s not forget that as times move on, these subject will become easier to deal with the more people get used to talking about them, along the lines of what has happened for race and disability. What these to characteristics have in common is that both relate to personal information that cannot be extrapolated from the individual unless they actually disclose it. For the individual to do this, they have to be at ease that the person asking the question has the understanding and sensitivity to handle their private information and that the information is not going to be used against them. It would be erroneous to assume that because a female is married and has children she might not be identifying as a transgender male or bisexual, or that a cross-dresser identifies as somebody of the gender the clothes he/she is wearing, or that a man who has sex with men would necessarily identify as gay or bisexual. This is down to personal opinion and sometimes people can be very opinionated about their own take on this because these issues are extremely personal and sometimes complex. To add to this, people who disclose information about their gender identity or sexual orientation on a form might have not disclosed this information to other people around them. This means that particular care needs to be placed on safeguarding confidentiality and privacy, whilst valuing the disclosure that people might make to an organisation. LGBT Excellence Centre 376, Newport Road, Cardiff, CF23 9AE, Tel. 029 20451868 Website: www.ecwales.org.uk E-mail info@ecwales.org.uk Company Registration Number 6407962 Charity Registration 1123355
LGBT Excellence Centre Unleashing Wales’ Potential - Empowering Communities to Flourish
Monitoring Questions Monitoring forms should have the following questions for the purposes of assessing gender identity and sexual orientation equality of opportunities: Gender Question:
How would you describe your gender?
Answers:
Male Female Other: _________ Prefer not to say
Reasoning
This question allows the organisation to appraise gender balance and also allows the individual to disclose the gender that they identify as. Whilst the legal system only recognises male or female, this monitoring question offers the opportunity to monitor whether people feel differently and indeed allows people who are intersex, intergender, or genderqueer to state their status.
Gender Identity Question:
Do you still live in the same gender as what you were assigned at birth?
Answers:
Yes No Other: _________ Prefer not to say
Reasoning
This question allows the organisation to appraise whether there is any discrimination that people might experience because of their gender identity or gender reassignment issues. However, not everyone that no longer lives in the same gender as what they were assigned at birth has a gender reassignment.
Sexual Orientation Question:
How would you describe your sexual orientation?
Answers:
Heterosexual/Straight Gay Lesbian/Gay Woman Bisexual Other: _________ Prefer not to say
Reasoning
This question allows the organisation to appraise whether there is any discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and also allows the individual to disclose their sexual orientation should the feel it is important for them to do so.
LGBT Excellence Centre 376, Newport Road, Cardiff, CF23 9AE, Tel. 029 20451868 Website: www.ecwales.org.uk E-mail info@ecwales.org.uk Company Registration Number 6407962 Charity Registration 1123355