Gender-Neutral Policies

With election season, voters will determine if their city’s charter or state’s constitution should be changed to gender-neutral language or not. Citizens in Westlake, Ohio are voting on adjusting their city charter’s gendered language. The director of development of the LGBT Community Center of Greater Cleveland stated, “It is really an opportunity to broaden our linguistic base and to modify its use to make sure that people do feel included. It is somewhat forward looking in the sense that they’re also not talking about just changing the language to say men and women or male and female pronouns; it’s going beyond gender. It’s going beyond gender pronouns. I think it offers our neighbors an opportunity to really feel like they are part of the community, broadly.” 

Meanwhile citizens of Ohio will vote to determine if the state’s constitution should apply gender-neutral language. The army recently made the Army Combat Fitness Test physical training qualifications gender neutral. Before October, these qualifications were separated by both age and gender.

The state of New York is enforcing hair salons to have gender-neutral prices due the “pink tax” ban prohibiting gender based pricing.