- Conference
- 2025 National LGBT+ Conference
- Date
- 23 July 2025
- Decision
- Carried
Conference notes that current conflation and confusion regarding data collection methods often fail to capture the diversity of sexual orientation, gender identities and expression, leading to gaps in understanding and addressing the unique challenges faced by our community.
Conference acknowledges that limited collection of data on sex and gender can often be distressing for transgender, non-binary and gender diverse people due to inconsistent and often limited gender options, which can result in a lack of recognition, understanding and awareness of a person’s unique gender identity and expression. This limitation also forces LGBT+ people to choose a gender or sexual orientation which is not truly reflective of their identities, such as simply stating they are “trans” rather than “non-binary”.
Conference believes that comprehensive and inclusive data collection on gender is essential to developing practices that recognise and support all LGBT+ members. Data used by government and organisations should reflect peoples lived experience to influence policy. Data collection limiting gender and sex can be unproductive, harmful to lived experience and, put both trans and cis people at an increased risk of breaches of human rights law and information rights. It is also likely to discourage LGBT+ people from participating in research and responding to surveys. The effect of this would be to further marginalise the LGBT+ population.
Conference also recognises that many members can be unsure of a person’s legal rights in relation to data collection. Conference recognises that there may be privacy and confidentiality concerns when data collection processes and developed within the workplace to protect identities and safety of LGBT+ members.
Conference therefore calls on the National LGBT+ Committee to:
1)Lobby the United Kingdom (UK) Government via Labour Link for data collection to remain inclusive and is expansive in relation to sexual orientation and gender;
2)Work with Branches and Regions to carry out audits of how sex and gender are recorded within workplaces;
3)Develop resources on data collection in relation to workforce sex and gender, and the legal protections for workers in relation to their information rights.