This is about those people who think they can cherrypick which Equality Act protected characteristic(s) they will de facto recognise and which not. You see it all the time in Equality Action Plans where not all the PCs are monitored or even mentioned. You see it in which #EDI events are put on or which lanyards are worn. It’s also about failing to train even senior staff on the duties they bear both personally and/ or acting for their organisations.
Here is a timely example.
Today, Ursula Doyle @suladoyle on X, herself a victim of unlawful conduct, wrote the following “The Everyday Cancellation report [https://sex-matters.org/posts/publications/everyday-cancellation-in-publishing/] was sent to the comms directors of all the trade publishers and many other senior people. This is the reply we had from one. Another illustration of the atmosphere in publishing. This person won’t even read it because he/she ‘disagrees’ with SEEN.” [Sex Equality and Equality Network]
This publishing communications director is essentially saying that because they do not believe that gender critical people have equality rights, (or at the very least their rights are less important than those of those who come within the PC of gender reassignment) they are perfectly content never to learn about people being unlawfully discrimination against and harassed in their industry. Presumably, they want at least to stay in blissful ignorance rather than take steps to ensure such things are not occurring in their workplace.
Shameful.
The Communications Director may well manage staff or have colleagues or job applicants who are gender critical.
You dont get to cherry pick which protected characteristics you protect and those you dont. As with service provision, education, transport etc, at work, using a Worzel Gummidge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worzel_Gummidge analogy, you put your political head aside and put on your duty-bearer head. Yes, you are a duty bearer in the Equality Act.
This means both your organisation and you are liable potentially for any unlawful discrimination harassment and victimisation undertaken by you in the course of your employment.
There is enough caselaw now on gender critical people (mostly women) winning Employment Tribunals against people who thought like this communications director (but then went further and discriminated against or harassed gender critical people).
Ruth Birchall and Professor Jo Phoenix, one of the victims, have written an excellent report summarising and advising on common features of such equality law cases. It is be found at https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/118472/8/Dont%20Get%20Caught%20Out%20final%20%28002%29.pdf
In the Executive Summary, they wrote:
“Taken together the judgments provide evidence that employers are failing to equally protect gender affirmative and gender critical beliefs. They are also failing to understand that a dominant gender affirmative workplace culture can foster an environment where people with gender critical beliefs are unlawfully harassed or discriminated against. This is in direct contrast to the obligation placed on employers to create workplace cultures that tolerate a diversity of beliefs. They demonstrate that in many workplaces across different sectors hostility towards expression of gender critical beliefs has been normalised. This is aworkplace culture in which accusations of transphobia and derogatory name calling aretolerated by management and there is a widespread practice of managers takingcomplaints of transphobia at face value, not investigating them to establish if they aresubstantive or vexatious. Managers and leaders may express fear or concerns in dealing with a vocal contingent complaining about the expression of gender critical beliefs.”
So, a publishing focused report evidencing widespread unlawful discrimination should be read and analysed or, as in this case, angrily rebuffed? A senior publishing executive took the latter course.
I wonder if their written reply will ever be the subject of cross examination in an Employment Tribunal?