Stonewall is to review how it compiles its ranking of top LGBT employers, amid a fierce backlash over the organisation’s trans lobbying.
As reported by the Telegraph, the LGBT campaigning charity is planning to review its Workplace Equality Index, which scores organisations based on Stonewall’s opinion of their diversity and inclusion policies.
The Workplace Equality Index forms the basis of Stonewall’s flagship Top 100 Employers List, which last year included Wickes (#11), HSBC (#12), Tesco Stores (#15), Barclays (#32), NHS England (#68), and a total of 13 universities.
Companies wanting to be included on the Index need to answer various questions about their inclusivity policies, which have in the past included whether private health insurance covers transition-related treatments.
Stonewall has also advised organisations eager for a place on the Index to replace the word mother with “parent who has given birth” in their employee training and guides, and to post more about LGBT issues from their offical social media accounts to help boost their ranking.
The Welsh government, which appeared high on the list in 2020, deleted the term mother from its maternity policy in 2019.
Earlier this year, an FoI request revealed that the Environment Agency had introduced a raft of ‘LGBT-friendly’ measures for inclusion in the Index, adopting “non-gendered” language for staff policies, allowing employees to officially “express different identities on different days”, and championing “gender neutral facilities”. The public body also now asks prospective suppliers and contractors to submit their policies on “diversity and equality”, and scrutinises their approach to what it describes as “transphobic harassment”.
The Index review is understood to be a routine procedure that happens every three years. However, Stonewall could face pressure to reexamine its scoring system after concerns were raised that its approach is inconsistent with UK equality law, and effectively encourages organisations to adopt workplace policies in which a person’s self-identified gender takes precedence over biological sex.
That inconsistency matters, because as the Information Commissioner found back in 2022, Stonewall’s Index, along with its Diversity Champions Scheme – which includes guidance to employers on gender-neutral spaces and the use of pronouns – allow the charity to exercise “a significant degree of influence over the policies that participating members operate”, and that “by associating themselves with Stonewall’s brand, employers are bound to chase its approval”.
Speaking at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference last November, equalities minister Kemi Badenoch said government officials had proceeded on the “wrong track on gender ideology” because it pandered to activist organisations such as Stonewall which were “pretending to be neutral”, when in reality they are pursuing their own law reform agenda in the guise of ‘training’.
She went on to criticise Stonewall’s overreach in “giving people legal advice or advice that was certainly different from what the Equality Act said”, and said the Government should do more in “challenging activist groups that take over institutions”.
Earlier this year, legal opinion commissioned by campaign group Sex Matters found that King’s College London’s Stonewall-influenced EDI policies relating to sex and gender reassignment are “incorrect, as a matter of law, in several substantial respects”.
The legal opinion was produced by Akua Reindorf KC, the same barrister who was commissioned by the University of Essex back in 2021 to review the Stonewall-influenced harassment and bullying policies that led to the ‘no-platforming’ of two visiting gender-critical law professors. Her conclusion there was that the University’s guidance around trans issues was “misleading” because it “states the law as Stonewall would prefer it to be, rather than the law as it is”.
Following these criticisms, several of Stonewall’s Top 100 employers from 2023 have now said they do not want to be included in this year’s rankings.
The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs decided not to submit an application for Stonewall’s 2024 index and does not plan to enter next year. Oxford University recently revealed that it has not submitted an application to the Index for the second year in a row, having ranked 76th as recently as 2019.
The NHS Business Services Authority has also opted against reentering and instead took the opportunity to review its approach.
Tanya de Grunwald, who advises companies on HR issues, expects to see other “big brands” follow suit. “They [companies] will do this as quietly as possible – saying they have reviewed value for money and have found other ways to support their LGBTQ+ employees,” she told the Telegraph.
Stonewall was meant to release its 2024 index as early as February, but has apparently decided to delay the scores until the summer to coincide with Pride celebrations.
