Meeting for Sufferings: Tabular statement concern
A suggestion has been made for a change to the data collected in tabular statements
Gloucestershire Area Meeting brought to Meeting for Sufferings the suggestion that the Religious Society of Friends might cease to ask its members and attenders to declare a specific gender in forthcoming tabular statements.
The invitation to consider the idea, contained in a minute for Sufferings, followed discernment among Friends at Cheltenham Meeting and in a Threshing Meeting held in October 2014. The concern came from a membership clerk, who asked why she should ‘require Friends to tick a box as to their gender?’
The minute read: ‘We recognise that in our Quaker Community in the past it felt important to count men and women separately in the interests of our witness to equality. With that same commitment today, however, we feel it is time to move on from a binary view of humanity. We are concerned that in continuing a gender count, our Society may be unwittingly discriminatory.’
The minute was forwarded to the recording clerk of Britain Yearly Meeting. He was asked to consider the points made by Gloucestershire Area Meeting and to report back to Sufferings in due course.
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