LGBTQ+ Inclusion Matters Online Summit

During Pride Month, we celebrate LGBTQIA+ pride and mark the month of the Stonewall riots in the US in 1969. Pride Month is about inclusion, acceptance, educating people in the history of Pride and taking a close look at how far gay rights have, and haven’t, moved forwards.

This June, I joined Equality Leaders at an online summit to hear from global leading executives about what it means to be LGBTQ+ in 2021. Speakers shared ideas on what organisations should be doing to celebrate the values that LGBTQ+ colleagues bring to the workforce and how their needs and expectations have changed.

LGBTQ+ Inclusion at work

John Elliot, Chief Technology Officer at Sainsburys spoke about his journey from ‘Living a lie to living a life’ and being an out gay man at work.  His recommendation is to find the hook that will resonate with colleagues based on their own experiences, to engage them in promoting inclusion and belonging in the workplace. “A top tip is to listen to people’s lived experiences, to essentially walk a mile in their shoes,” he advised.

Change and inclusion expert, David Pearson, echoed this point when he reminded us that: “Opinion is the lowest form of knowledge. The highest form of knowledge is empathy.” Love, and who we love can be a taboo conversation at work, along with topics such as menopause, IVF and mental health. Yet if staff feel a greater sense of belonging and can bring their whole selves to work, sickness absence reduces and productivity can increase by over 50%.

Nicci Take is head of a sales organisation and pointed out that as a transgender woman, leading the company really helps you to feel like you belong. However, nine people did leave the organisation when she transitioned. She supports the use of personal pronouns, for example in email footers and Twitter handles, as it demonstrates people’s general support for the trans community but also for inclusion more widely.

“Diversity is seeing you have all the ingredients for a chicken curry, and inclusion is getting Gordan Ramsey to cook it,” she explained. “The chicken thinks it’s the star of the dish but it’s the salt that adds the flavour, even though it is only a tiny ingredient.”

Her advice on benefitting from the diversity in your workplace is to make sure that everyone in the room actually has a chance to speak (tick them off if you have to). “This is because you never know where the salt is,” she said.

Paul Martin is CEO of the LGBT Foundation, where 25% of staff are non binary or trans. He is very aware that for the LGBTQ+ community, the idea of ‘logical family’, a family you choose for yourself rather than your biological family, is very important, particular in COVID times. He noted that only 0.3% of all charitable funding goes to LGBTQ+ charities, meaning these organisations are particularly squeezed by the drop in donations during the pandemic. If you are working in your passion area, such as a charity, it’s important to set boundaries and not ‘burn too brightly’ (especially on Twitter!) It’s much more effective to promote change over the long term – approach it like a marathon, not a sprint.

Jon Hayes, Corporate Partner and lead sponsor of DLA Piper’s LGBT+ Network described how a UK National LGBT survey as recently as 2018 showed that 68% do not feel comfortable holding hands with a same sex partner. As a straight ally, he could identify with that from his own experience, as he and his future wife were not comfortable holding hands too near their respective law offices. For him, nurturing talent and having as wide a pool of people in your team as possible is hugely beneficial. “Remote working has let us all in into peoples’ lives a bit more, while at the same time being very isolating,” he said. Jon feels that it is important for straight allies to be visibly supportive, for example by wearing a Pride themed lanyard and to be seen to thrive when taking an inclusive approach.

Supporting LGBTQ+ parents

The event posed the questions, what does it mean to be an LGBTQ+ parent and how can employers support parenting? LGBTQ+ parents on the panel reported that they struggled with how much or how little of their journey to parenthood to share at work. They wanted to bring people on board with what they were going through, but lacked role models for adoption, sperm donation and surrogacy. Sometimes they had to handle highly intrusive questions that they felt other parents would not have been asked. LGBTQ+ networks could be a helpful source of support, but also parent and carer networks, particularly if they offer resources for rainbow families.

Some tips from the panel on how to support LGBTQ+ staff through parenthood:

• Adoption is a very time consuming and emotionally draining process and employers can help by offering time off or flexible working.
• It is crucial how policies are applied by individual line managers. Too much flexibility in the rules can leave room for a manager’s bias to creep in
• Provide support for parents of LGBTQ+ children. Time off to support the young person during coming out or transition would be highly valued.
• The wording you use matters! ‘Parental leave’ is a much inclusive term than ‘paternity / maternity’ leave. ‘Adoptive parent’ can be quite hurtful – it’s just ‘parent’. Conversely, referring to a sperm donor as ‘dad’ can be equally hurtful.
• Don’t make assumptions about who is the main carer.  Sometimes gay men receive less confrontation about same sex parenting than they do about being a male main carer.
• Don’t be silent, ask how you can help or support people, whether as LGBTQ+ parents or parents of LGBTQ+ young people.

Inclusive communities

The final session focused on bringing together the LBGTQ+ community and allies to build a more inclusive culture. Bendita Cynthia Malakia, Global Head of EDI at Hogan Lovells spoke about the ‘oppression Olympics’, a characterisation of marginalisation as a competition to determine the relative weight of the overall oppression of individuals or groups, often by comparing race, gender, socioeconomic status or disabilities, in order to determine who is the worst off, and the most oppressed. “Non marginalised people may use this discourse as a reason not to engage,” she warned. “You should not have to wait your turn until women’s issues are fixed, or race, or sexuality. You cannot segment these identities.”

In her view, cancel culture discourages some people from trying to understand better or do helpful things, even if they don’t get it right every time. “We need them as allies for when we are not in the room to make the decisions,” she said. “Curiosity, not confrontation is needed.”

Make sure when you are having conversations about inclusion that you acknowledge which groups you have spoken to, which you have not and why. Employee groups representing different communities based on sexuality, race or religion could join together on particular issues, for example immigration or parents’ rights.

“Equity is about taking actions that address an inequitable system,” she emphasised. “Be aware of your or your group’s privileges and don’t take a siloed approach. Do something for all women, whether they are women of colour or white, cis or trans.”

Leng Montgomery was the first trans male Masterchef contestant. “Equality is like creating a showstopper cake for everyone. You are not trying to give some people a big slice of the cake and just leave crumbs for others.” He worries that in our haste to build back post-pandemic, organisations will stick to the ‘safe pair of hands’ dinosaur diversity settings as a fall back. Also, we should beware of an over focus on data. “If I hear the same thing coming from the same people repeatedly, I don’t always need the data in order to act. Employee resource groups or networks should also act as allies for each other, for example on International Women’s Day or for Black History Month.”

A call for joint allyship was echoed by Geoffrey Williams, from Dr Martens. “Find out who is where, doing what and experiencing the company in what way. Focus on the personality types in your organisation rather than the shell they come in. Make sure employee groups work together and think about who isn’t in the room right now when you plan events and activities.”

I think we can all agree that post pandemic, working together and acting as allies for each other would help to make sure that we really do ‘build back better’.

Celebrating with Pride at the Wellcome Genome Campus in June 2020

June 2020 will probably go down in the books as one of the most uniquely challenging LGBT Pride Months since it began twenty years ago. The global COVID-19 pandemic shut down marches, parties and most of the activities that make Pride such a special time of year. For many, Pride Month is the time to celebrate progress for LGBTQ+ rights, but also to highlight the many inequalities that remain. At the Wellcome Genome Campus, the LGBT Network and Equality in Science joined together to host a series of talks to mark Pride Month and bring the community together virtually.

Noah Tate and non-binary identities

Our first speaker was Noah Tate, who graduated with a physics degree in 2013 and has been working in the book publishing industry ever since. They started their career working on books for the general public about the environment, climate change and food growing; then moved into medical books by doctors for doctors at the same moment as coming out as non-binary, transgender and a few months later bisexual. Today, Noah leads the book production team at the Royal Society of Chemistry and co-organises the LGBT+ Staff Network at the RSC.

Stonewall research from 2017 showed that many University leavers who have been open about LGBT+ identities during their studies, return to hiding some or all aspects of their identity upon entering the workforce. Calling on their own activism and experiences, and with reference to the high number of graduates in STEM workplaces, Noah explored why non-binary identities and pronouns are challenging to disclose and fraught to police when interacting with colleagues, managers and HR professionals.

Noah pointed out that it’s only polite to check with people which pronouns they use (NOT prefer). If you are struggling with terminology, just mirror the language the person is already using. Noah sees a worrying level of erasure of non-binary people at all levels. This is potentially very damaging.

“For example, in a policy document, if he/she is used, does that not include me?” asked Noah. “Using he/she/they or just ‘they’ on its own is much more inclusive of everyone.” The use of the singular ‘they’ for a person of unknown gender has been around for 100 years, and we should be able to use it comfortably today.

To be a legal person in the UK, you must declare your gender to the government as male or female. Other countries do allow for a non-binary legal identity, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malta, Denmark and New Zealand. Gender identity affects many processes in the UK such as health care, visas, tax, registering the birth of a child, getting a driving licence or passport and which Act you are able get married under. Even placing an internet order often requires you to select a title. Clothes are filed by gender in the shops and you are continuously confronted by people’s expectations of what you should or shouldn’t be wearing.

When you first join a company, even setting up your tax means you need to have very early conversations about gender with HR, which can make you feel as if you are being a ‘nuisance’ right from the start.

“When it comes to workplace toilets, I ask myself which ones that are not made for me do I use today?” said Noah. “Please do not make toilets gendered if they do not need to be! You can’t ignore your own gender when you are constantly reminded and confronted with it, or shown examples where non binary identities have been denied or simply forgotten.”

Noah pointed out that transitioning gender is a tough time – you need to change your social identity and live and work as that identity before you have access to any medical treatment to help you transition. “Be kind if that person is proactive about correcting your language or use of pronouns,” advised Noah. “This is not an easy time.”

Noah has seen that workplace aggressions can include refusing to use ‘they’, misgendering someone on purpose or following someone to check on which toilets they use. “If you accidentally misgender someone, don’t panic, correct yourself immediately and move on in the conversation,” says Noah. “Proof read your written communications and make sure the pronouns are correct. Don’t tie yourself in grammatical knots to try and avoid using them!”

 “Being non binary in the workplace needs a healthy dose of pragmatism,” summarised Noah. “I don’t always argue the case for my own existence in every situation, for example when dealing with procurement and suppliers.”

Noah’s recommendations for the workplace are:

• Use ‘they’ in policies and official documents as well as he/she
• Use ‘they’ in academic writing
• Use Mx as an option for titles, or don’t require them
• Have pronoun stickers for events, email footers or name badges
• Ask for a person’s pronouns, don’t assume them
• Use the language/terms they use
• Treat a non binary person like a person – discover who they are and their interests and talk about that!
• Don’t burden the non binary or trans person with your views on these topics unless they ask you to – they are not burdening you with theirs!

Lilly Hunt discusses being queer in STEM

Our second speaker was Dr Lilly Hunt from the Wellcome Trust, who spoke to us about being a queer women in STEM.

Lilly explained how important it is to step up and be open about being LGBT. “You see a lot of heteronormative presumptions,” she said. “For example, on Wikipedia, a person is not labelled ‘presumed straight’ but LGBT people are labelled.”

Organisations should create a safe space at work in advance of anyone needing to come to them for help. Lilly explained why there is an impact on the individual when they come out as LGBT at work.

“You find yourself having to come out time after time. People answer questions with personal details about their family, kids and friends all the time. As a queer person, your mind is racing about what to say and when and to whom. Do I feel safe in this room, how will people react – will they think you are sharing what they don’t want to know?”

“This can be exhausting. It’s better to put a scientist’s brain to use thinking about science! A welcoming, open environment, happy with all forms of diversity means that you can be free and forget about these things,” confirmed Lilly.

Being LGBTQ+ in a pandemic

Lilly reminded us that in the age of virtual work meetings, our personal lives are no longer as private as they used to be. Now we know about people’s home circumstances from video calls. Even with a shielding background applied, we might be interrupted with a family emergency. If you are not out at work, you need to be very careful all the time, or you might be forced to come out before you are ready.

“If someone comes out online, be cool – don’t make a big deal or ask why they haven’t come out before,” advised Lilly.

There are some particular difficulties for LGBTQ+ people during this most unusual of times. They may have difficulty accessing healthcare and medication if they are transitioning, or be immunocompromised. Some may be living with hostile home environments, especially young people stuck at home with relatives. They are likely to be experiencing loneliness and isolation and may be subject to homelessness or insecure housing. Be aware of the issues particularly affecting your LGBT staff and have support in place.

Celebrating Pride online

As we have been forced to move Pride online, Lilly suggests using the following to keep the LGBTQ+ community visible and supported.

• Make your trans work place policies public
• Revisit the roots for LGBTQ+ community, such as Stonewall and activism
• Advocate for social change
• Be aware of intersectional aspects of identities, such black trans lives matter
• Address ableism to make sure that Pride is accessible
• Stay connected with communities

Fusion LGBT Group at Birchwood High School

Closing out our June Pride activities was an inspirational talk from the Fusion LGBT Group at Birchwood High School in Bishop’s Stortford. Fusion is Birchwood High School’s Equality and Diversity group. Fusion was set up in November 2016 and has gone from strength to strength, welcoming guest speakers, visiting parliament to speak with MPs from the LGBT+ community, celebrating LGBT+ History Month, organising fundraising events, as well as providing a weekly safe space for students within the school community. A key aim has been to raise the profile of LGBT+ issues and promote a culture of acceptance without exception. Fusion achieved a Bronze award through the Stonewall School Champion programme in January 2019 for their work tackling homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying.

Joe Harlow introduced the group and is a school counsellor and the lead for both LGBT+ inclusion and Young Carers at Birchwood High School. He has been in charge of Fusion since it was established.

Joe described how he was hugely proud to have the opportunity to work with such a fantastic group of young people. He believes passionately that education and promoting a culture of acceptance and respect without exception is key to making a school (or anywhere) a great place to be for every member of the community.

“If you feel accepted, it influences you and provides a bedrock. This is about your personal lived experience. Just ticking a box is not enough and acceptance has to go deeper,” said Joe.

 “This is a responsibility of everyone and a necessity of school life,” he explainee. “Staff have been trained and all policies are designed to be inclusive. There is always space for learning, always space for growth. Now we are exploring gender identities and class issues.”

“The group makes a difference to the whole school, even to those who do not attend each week, because they are represented and free to be themselves. Of course, you cannot tell someone to think a certain way but you can create opportunities for visibility and understanding. Everyone should be safe to be themselves and we all have a part to play in that,” said Joe.

Jonathan Cowan, a founding member of the Fusion group, explained how it is a safe space firstly, for those of any background, almost a family. It is platform for change in the school and elevates your voice. Jonathan described how important it is to also tackle racism in schools. Jonathan joined the Stonewall Campaigners Programme thanks to the school which included a weekend course and a 6 month campaign to create the change he wanted to make. In schools, education and representation, normalisation and acceptance are all key. You need to educate the uninformed about people’s experience and stress that everyone is different, including listening to LGBT+ people in person.

“Arguments online are about throwing words at each other, not appreciating there is a person behind it with a life, which means no less than yours,” explained Jonathon. “We need to normalise LGBT experiences and lives. Personally, I would like to see this at a curriculum level.”

Olivia Hamilton is also a founding member of fusion. “The group is really close to my heart! I’ve watched it develop and grow over 3 years to become an integral part of life from Birchwood,” said Olivia. “It’s not just an LGBT group, we have people from all backgrounds. A group can make all the difference even if you start small. It’s important to educate allies to support their friends.”

Olivia would like to see a greater focus on LGBTQ+ topics and histories in PSHE (Personal, Social, Health and Economic education) and other curriculum areas. It is a human right to be able to express yourself but it has to be acceptable in society as well as in law. Olivia believes you can achieve this through young people. “No one is born homo, bi, trans phobic or racist,” said Olivia. “Young people can then influence those around them.”

Social media has a lack of consequence for hate speech but can also be used to celebrate LGBT people and spread awareness. Olivia sees that there are still challenges in the school environment – she feels that racism may be addressed ahead of LGBT issues. There is erasure of LGBT people and ‘gay’ is still used as a term of abuse. Prejudice comes from all angles, from local community and wider society.

“We all have the right to live without fear, without guilt and without shame,” said Olivia.

Tom Wilson, our third Fusion member sees acceptance as the issue, with a lack of willingness to attempt to understand the information offered. He would like to see a safe and nurturing environment and a life without fear or apprehension. It should be safe to discuss what you want to achieve and be, in careers and in life. If acceptance is missing, there can be disastrous consequences. Tom reminds us that 1 in 5 people in the LGBT community have experienced a hate crime and this figure is still growing. Similarly for the BAME community, he sees an unwillingness to understand leading to violent and vile consequences. “We should all have the right to a better and more fulfilling existence,” he concluded.

The group’s advice for parents and allies in supporting young people included:

• Listen to each other’s experiences
• Normalise LGBTQ+ experiences and use pronouns correctly
• Role models are very important – you can’t be what you can’t see
• Pay attention to complaints or concerns from individuals, because it is probably not just that person experiencing the same issue
• Be what you say you are, be inclusive and prove that you are
• Look outside your social bubble, beyond school and work to hear other voices
• Be a leader for change – you can trigger a domino effect, meaning that other schools and workplaces will follow suit

Pride 2020 may have been a year like no other, but it has perhaps offered an unprecedented opportunity to think, take stock and understand what the ‘new normal’ should start to look like – so that for Pride 2021, we really have something to celebrate.