In addition to promoting gender equality, public authorities must prevent discrimination based on gender identity or gender expression in a targeted and planned way. This must be taken into account when drawing up the plans required by the Act on Equality between Women and Men and when deciding on measures to promote equality.
The obligation to prevent discrimination applies, for example, to social and health services or sports services provided by municipalities and wellbeing services counties. To prevent discrimination, services must be organised in a way that takes into account the needs and rights of persons belonging to sexual minorities.
Everyone working in public authorities should be familiar with the basics of gender diversity and possible discrimination against sexual minorities. This will ensure that the authority also knows how to tackle and prevent discrimination in practice.
What is gender identity or gender expression?
Legal gender, i.e. the gender recorded in the Population Register, is public information. Being a member of a gender minority, on the other hand, is a matter of privacy, and a person's gender identity or gender expression is not always disclosed in the public sphere, in the workplace or at educational institutions.
The identity of members of gender minorities must be respected. Promoting gender equality does not require or imply that a person's gender identity or gender expression be explored. The initiative of disclosing gender identity must come from the person themselves, and an authority cannot require such information.
In a situation where a public authority, in the course of its activities or as an employer, might consider it necessary and justified to ask a person about their gender identity, for example in a questionnaire, anonymity must be ensured, i.e. information on gender identity cannot be combined with other personal data. This is important to ensure that a person is not exposed to discrimination.