This is the last weekly round-up of Equality and Diversity news for this year. We’ll be back in the new year with more news and posts to keep you engaged!

Highlights from this week include – US military’s first Hindu chaplain, forced marriages in England and how to teach school children about gender variance.

The US military has appointed its first Hindu chaplain. Until now over a thousand Hindus serving in the US military had no military confidant of their religion. Captain Pratima Dharm, the Hindu chaplain, welcomed the move and said this is a significant appointment for her military congregation.

Contributing to the debate on whether forced marriages should be made a criminal offence, a paper was published last week containing estimates on forced marriages in England. According to the consultation paper, there are around 5,000 to 8,000 forced marriages every year but it’s difficult to know the full scale. Theresa May, the home secretary, said: “It is an appalling form of abuse and perceived cultural sensitivities should not stop us doing more to tackle it.”

The government is proposing to introduce ‘equality classes’ in schools. According to proposals under the Transgender Equality Action Plan (which we mentioned in last week’s news), these classes would include teaching students what it means to be transsexual and transgender. The Action Plan believes this will “help schools become more inclusive for gender variant children and…provide more support and protection to transgender pupils in schools”.

On that note, do read this brilliant article on how a school teacher taught her students about gender variance. It was a lesson in ‘It’s OK to be different’, she says!
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Thank you for your contributions this year. We hope you have enjoyed reading the blog. As always, if you have something in mind for the blog, please write to Equality.and.Diversity@lse.ac.uk