Staff at the Labour-run Wandsworth Borough Council have been instructed to state their pronouns when meetings begin, leaked documents reveal.
The south London authority is additionally urging employees to display gender-neutral pronoun options, including “ze/zir/zem”, on their email signatures and social media accounts.
The council’s memo argues that members of non-binary and transgender communities need to be “more seen and recognised” through workplace practices.
According to the document, most people were previously only familiar with “he/him/his” and “she/her/hers” as pronoun options.
“However, as the non-binary community has become more visible, more people are becoming aware of non-gendered pronouns such as they/them/theirs and ze/zir/zem,” the memo states.
The guidance describes incorporating pronouns into email signatures, Microsoft 365 profiles and social media accounts as a “simple step cisgender people can take” in the workplace.
By announcing pronouns at the beginning of meetings, the authority believes staff can help colleagues from transgender and non-binary backgrounds feel acknowledged in the workplace, per The Telegraph.
However, the guidance has prompted sharp criticism from women’s rights organisations, who argue it could amount to discrimination against workers who reject gender identity ideology.
Wandsworth council has told staff to announce their pronouns and add ‘ze/zir/zem’ to emails
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They hit out at Wandsworth’s directives in reference to last year’s Supreme Court judgment, which established that the legal definition of woman under the Equality Act refers to biological sex.
Susan Smith, leader of For Women Scotland, questioned whether the council might lack more pressing concerns, though she suggested the policy “might help signal which members of staff should not be taken seriously”.
“Will they be asking staff to declare star signs or belief in the tooth fairy?” she asked.
Ms Smith warned that compelling employees to make such declarations “could be a discriminatory act against those who do not subscribe to this ideology and who will be concerned that this will be used to root out heresy”.
The Labour-run authority said the practice would allow non-binary and transgender communities to be ‘more seen and recognised’
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WANDSWORTH BOROUGH COUNCILShe added: “At best, they are making the council a laughing stock, at worst, they are providing evidence to be used against them in future tribunals.”
Fiona McAnena, director of campaigns at the sex-based rights charity Sex Matters, described the policy as “ludicrous”.
“That a public body has given the example of zi/zir/zem as so-called ‘neo-pronouns’ – invented words that supposedly indicate being neither a man nor a woman – is so silly that it feels like satire,” she told The Telegraph.
Ms McAnena argued the council was effectively encouraging staff “to support the fantasy that people can be the opposite sex, or no sex at all”.
Susan Smith of For Women Scotland said the directive ‘could be discriminatory’ to those who did not share the same gender ideology
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GB News, PAShe noted that “this sort of nonsense is already going out of fashion” and called on Wandsworth to follow other organisations that have abandoned similar pronoun policies.
Such guidance, she maintained, fails to “reflect reality” and instead discriminates against employees and service users who do not hold “fringe gender-identity beliefs”.
It comes as the Government confirmed that it will not withdraw its own single-sex spaces policy in the workplace despite concerns that it breaches the Supreme Court ruling in April 2025.
According to the charity, the policy allows employees to access opposite-sex workplace facilities and tell colleagues and line managers that questioning this is “transphobia”.