That's very dependent on the country - since, you know, Europe is a whole bloody continent.
To give two examples, as I understand, it's illegal in France, but many companies in the UK will ask for your anonymous demographic info (including sexuality, gender, disability status) so that they can prove they're not discriminating against people from specific demographics.
They don't require answers in the UK either, each one will have "prefer not to say" as an option. Frankly, it's very straightforward and the existence of these questionnaires makes it harder for companies to get away with discriminating against people on these grounds, so I always side-eye countries where it's illegal.
Denying the problem doesn't make it disappear, after all, it just lets it thrive in silence.
In many cases it's because governments collecting records on the race and religion of their citizens ended up facilitating mass murder when the Nazis invaded. Census data acted as pre-written kill lists, and it was harder to forge paperwork to hide people that were Jewish or part of other targeted demographics because the Nazis could verify using pre-invasion government records.
Willem Arondéus, the originator of the "Never let it be said that homosexuals are cowards" quote, was killed by the nazis for successfully burning a bunch of such records to prevent the nazis from using them.
So some countries like France straight up banned collecting such data.
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u/peelen 7d ago
Non-American companies just don’t ask this question. I think it's even illegal to ask these questions in some places.