Opinions

What’s gone wrong with DEI? With Meta, Deloitte and other well-known companies backpedalling on DEI initiatives, is corporate commitment to inclusion beginning to sour? If so, should other businesses begin following suit? In a word, No. Representing, welcoming and rewarding everyone on their merits and ability isn’t just a moral choice; it’s sound business sense — when done sensitively and well. To understand why DEI has become so divisive, we need to look at how it’s evolved over the years,...

By Dee McCullough, Lesbian Labour & LabourLGB   A fabulous new initiative is under way to create a Welsh Women’s Health website, and when they asked stakeholders for feedback I was first in the queue. I couldn’t fault the website — but the consultation itself had a fatal flaw. As always, we stakeholders were asked to give demographic details, one of which was “tick the box if you’re LGBTQIA+” Data collection is an important part of a modern, diverse nation, because any efforts to...

How difficult can it be not to break the law? This question at Wednesday’s We Mean Business event at the Scottish Parliament summed up the frustration of LGB employees who are ignored and sometimes silenced by Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) initiatives. As the audience member so forcefully (and correctly) pointed out, the Supreme Court ruling has made equalities law unambiguous. Implementation should therefore be child’s play. All it takes is a bit of backbone, a little leadership, to...

By Jo Bartosch Let’s be honest—if you’re gay, lesbian or bisexual, you could do a lot worse than Britain. Sure, we’ve got our problems, but we also have legal protections most of the world can only dream of. We can marry, adopt, and enjoy an equal age of consent. If someone attacks us for who we love, the law is firmly on our side. But you’d never know it if you listened to ILGA World. The international NGO recently announced that Britain had plummeted from 17th to 22nd on its annual Rainbow...

By Jo Bartosch Thanks to last month’s Supreme Court ruling, sex is now back on the workplace agenda. No longer a dirty word, it has reclaimed its legal meaning. Unsurprisingly, this has upended the business models of self-identified inclusion gurus. The consultants and charities who told employers to erase the word “mother” from maternity policies and warned against single-sex spaces are now doubling down. Some of those who bought their dodgy advice clearly feel they have no recourse other...

By Jo Bartosch Inclusion policies are fast burning a hole in corporate pockets. The blaze was ignited five years ago when lesbian barrister Allison Bailey took her own chambers, Garden Court Chambers (GCC), to an employment tribunal for punishing her over the outrageous assertion that lesbians are, in fact, female. GCC, on the advice of lobby group Stonewall, deemed her refusal to accept that straight men could be lesbians as transphobic. She won aggravated damages. Fast forward to today, and...

By Jan Baxter Until 2013, I’d been a regular attendee at PCS Union conference, not least because I was Secretary of the union’s LGBT group, Proud, for about six years, and represented PCS on the TUC LGBT committee. I’ve also been a Branch Secretary and Regional Equality Officer, amongst other roles. So, my return to conference as a branch delegate in May 24 wasn’t my first rodeo. Union conferences have everything from grandstanding bun fights to serious debate on home and international issues...

By Kate Barker, CEO, LGB Alliance  As Margot James MP famously said, “if you don’t like the idea of gay marriage, don’t marry a gay person.” Showing, rather neatly, that the advances LGB people have sought have never been at the expense of the rights of others. In fact, it’s clear that lesbians, gay men and bisexuals have a pretty good track record of driving social changes that – as it turned out – were actually good for everyone. It’s an approach that has served us well. It’s no longer...