Female, male or diverse? For over a year now, job advertisements in Germany no longer only address two genders. So far, the effect has been manageable.
Bonn / Frankfurt (dpa) - A year after the introduction of the third gender category "divers", hardly any applications have been received in large German corporations.
"I am not surprised," said lawyer Friederike Boll, who regularly represents victims of discrimination in this area legally, the German Press Agency. Since intersex people have been able to be entered in the birth register in the "diverse" category since the beginning of 2019, employers have also had to formulate their job advertisements in a gender-neutral manner - for example with the abbreviations (m / f / d).
So far, many companies have not received a single application in the third category, as a survey by the German Press Agency showed. These include the pharmaceutical company Bayer, the Essen-based energy company Eon, the Deutsche Bank and Vodafone. Other companies state that they do not record gender, according to Commerzbank or Continental Insurance. "It is to be welcomed if the gender category is poorly recorded," said lawyer Boll. After all, gender should not play a role in the selection.
The Deutsche Post is an outlier in the survey, according to which it claims that 700 applications with the gender "divers" have already been received. But it could be that people have grouped there because they do not want to comment on their gender, said a spokeswoman. Attorney Boll said: "I can also understand well when people say: What does my gender concern my employer? The risk of discrimination remains high."
While the job advertisements have adjusted fairly widely, there is still a lot of catching up to do in online shops, says Boll. If you had to provide your contact details there, you would often only have the choice between "Mr." and "Ms." - the same legal basis would apply.
The changes are based on a decision of the Federal Constitutional Court, which assessed the previous obligation to choose between male and female as a violation of the ban on discrimination. Sex characteristics, such as chromosomes, hormones and genitals, are not clearly defined in intersex people. However, the demand for transfers was very low in the first months after the new regulation. At the registry offices of the major German cities, there were only a few dozen inquiries.
