Employees in the municipality of Copenhagen must think before they say “mother” and “father”
Copenhagen municipality will integrate LGBT people with a new language policy.
In the future, the employees of Copenhagen municipality must communicate more considerately and jointly with the municipality’s residents, and the municipality’s employees must, for example, be more aware of asking questions if they are in doubt about which pronouns the resident prefers to be addressed and referred to.
This is reported by the news agency Ritzau according to Dansk TV 2.
The information appears in a new language guide in the municipality.
The HR/chief in Copenhagen municipality rejects the fact that certain words are banned. She emphasizes that the guidance must ensure that those residents who, for example, are part of the LGBT+ community and approach the municipality, also feel part of the community.
The language policy must help ensure that Copenhagen is a city for everyone.
– It is therefore not about banning individual words or expressions, writes HR manager in Copenhagen Municipality’s Economic Administration Nina Alin in an email reply to Berlingske.
In the guide, which must have been available on the municipality’s intranet for a month already, the employees can read that as an employee of the municipality, one should not take for granted that a family consists of a mother and a father. Employees must be aware that in some cases they must use the words “co-parent” and “partner”.
The supervisor is part of the municipality’s overall LGBT+ policy. The policy was designed in collaboration with Kvinfo and LHBT+ Denmark and was launched in 2019. At the time, Copenhagen was the first Danish city with such a policy.
Here, rules were made so that the municipality’s schemes, for example, must take rainbow families into account. At the same time, the focus is placed on the fact that the staff at the city’s schools and institutions must in future be prepared to meet children and young people with LGBT+ issues.