FDP on equality and diversity

The FDP wants sex education that covers sexual diversity and menstruation in depth. A state program is to make free period products available in educational institutions.

Classes should talk about sexual diversity. Periods should be a topic too. The FDP wants free pads and tampons at schools. A state program should pay for this.

Experts from outside school are to be involved in lessons. For the free products, the state should cooperate with the school authorities. A dedicated state program is planned for this.

The FDP calls for the Istanbul Convention on violence against women and domestic violence to be implemented quickly and fully in Hesse as well. This includes more places in women's shelters and anonymous, free evidence collection after sexual violence.

The FDP wants to protect women better from violence. There should be more places in women's shelters. Victims should be able to have evidence secured for free and without giving their name. They do not have to file a police report for this.

The federal and state governments are to work together more closely. Evidence collection is to be possible without filing a report. The FDP wants to examine whether pilot projects such as "Gewaltfrei in die Zukunft," funded by the Federal Ministry of Justice, could also start in Hesse. Contact persons at the police and in the courts are to be trained to common standards. Gynecologists' offices are to routinely provide information on support services, and work with perpetrators is to be expanded and given a permanent structure.

The FDP calls for equal pay for equal performance and wants to improve women's economic opportunities. It names statewide expansion of childcare as the key prerequisite; employers should disclose salary ranges and the criteria for pay grading.

Women and men should get the same pay for the same performance. The FDP wants more childcare all over Hesse. Then parents can work more easily. Employers should say how much a job pays.

The platform cites a pay gap of six percent for equal qualifications, work and career history and calls it unacceptable. Women's bargaining position on pay is to be strengthened. Better work-life balance is meant to enable women to work and fathers to take on more family work. In the FDP's view, time out of work for family and children should not count as a career break but as a period of experience. The freedom to shape one's own way of life should be preserved.

The FDP favors diversity management across all job functions but does not want to mandate it by regulation. The state should moderate, inform and support low-cost concepts for small and midsize businesses.

Diversity management means companies support the variety of their staff. The FDP likes this idea. But the state should not order it. It should inform and share good examples. Small and midsize companies should get simple concepts.

Business, the social sector and the public sector are to be informed about tools and the economic benefits. The Hessian ministries for economic affairs and for social affairs should initiate and support dialogues on best practice. Diversity at work should become a topic in vocational education and in business training programs. The FDP wants to encourage more Hessian companies to sign the Charta der Vielfalt (Diversity Charter).

The FDP expects the public sector to implement equal treatment and diversity management in an exemplary way. This includes flexible working hours, equal representation of women in leadership, job sharing at management level and better conditions for part-time staff.

Public offices should be a role model for equal rights. The FDP wants as many women as men in leadership there. Two people should be able to share one management job. People who work part-time should not be at a disadvantage.

The posts of women's and disability officers are to be turned into a broader diversity approach, with each dimension of diversity still addressed separately. Equality reports should be published regularly and according to uniform criteria; the platform sees a need to catch up at the state ministries. Managers should regularly point out to part-time staff the option of increasing their hours. When a full-time post is filled part-time, the workload should be reduced and a second part-time post advertised for the rest, or else assistance offered.

The FDP wants to further develop Hesse's Action Plan for Diversity and Acceptance and remove structural barriers to equality for LGBTI people. With legal equality achieved, the party says the focus should now be on full participation in society.

The FDP wants to do more for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex people. Hesse has an action plan for this. The FDP wants to improve the plan. Small groups should also get money for their work more easily.

Concrete steps are to be agreed with the "Round Table" or a comparable form of participation. Teachers are to be made more aware of the issue and supported, and cooperation with peer projects such as "SCHLAU" is to be stepped up. Funding procedures should be designed so that not only already professionalized organizations such as the AIDS service organizations can receive money. The platform lists education, health, psychosocial crisis support, youth work and increasingly work with older people as areas where LGBTI groups are needed.

The FDP wants Hesse's administration not to make it harder for trans people to establish their identity, and it welcomes the federal government's planned Self-Determination Act. Hesse should also work to end surgeries that assign a sex to intersex children.

Trans people should decide about their gender themselves. Offices in Hesse should not make this hard for them. The FDP likes the planned federal Self-Determination Act. Intersex children should no longer be forced to have surgery.

According to the platform, the free development of one's personality should not depend on outside expert assessments. The Self-Determination Act should at the same time ensure that protected spaces remain unaffected. Counseling services are to be evaluated and funded in a targeted way, and cooperation with organizations of those affected is to be intensified. Parents of intersex children are to receive counseling support, and the FDP wants to back services offered by self-help groups.

The FDP wants digital solutions to be accessible and to exclude no one. Algorithms in publicly funded projects should not entrench discrimination and should be transparent to the public.

Digital services should be usable for everyone. This includes people with disabilities. Computer programs should not treat anyone unfairly. In government projects, everyone should be able to check how the programs decide.

According to the platform, AI systems often entrench existing disadvantages; this is to be prevented in publicly funded projects. Public-sector algorithms would be disclosed unless security reasons stand in the way. For private projects, the FDP relies on raising awareness of the effects of biased data.