Maya Forstater is executive director of Sex Matters, a human rights organisation that campaigns for clarity on sex in law, policy, and language.
The Daily Telegraph has reported that senior government figures are considering a manifesto commitment to amend the Equality Act “to make it unambiguously clear that sex means biological sex”. This would protect single-sex spaces and women’s sports.
Judy Murray surely spoke for many when she responded on X: “What are you waiting for? Do it now.”
This is a good question. The Conservatives have been in power for 14 years. Although they didn’t create the messy intersection between the Equality Act and the Gender Recognition Act, they have no excuse for not having fixed it.
It has been clear for too long that extreme transgender activists are taking advantage of legal complexity to encourage children to believe in the impossible, and to trample over fairness, privacy and dignity for women.
Last year over 110,000 people signed a petition asking the Government to clarify the law, and it was debated in Westminster Hall. Maria Caulfield, the minister, said in that debate:
“…law has to be functional and able to take into account everyday experiences and respond to modern challenges. Failing to guarantee that would be to do a disservice to our constituents and those who rely on the law to carry out their functions and safeguard their basic rights.”
A group of Scottish women is bringing a case which asks the Supreme Court to split the baby. The case concerns the question of whether, when it comes to counting the number of women and men on public boards in Scotland, transgender people with a certificate should be treated differently than those without.
The answer to that obscure question may have far-reaching legal implications about whether a trans-identifying male with a government certificate saying “female” must be treated differently from other males when it comes to decision-making by those managing women’s sports, rape crisis centres, and women’s refuges, as well as those employing security guards, police officers, prison officers, and teachers, whose job includes searching and supervising women and girls when they are undressed.
Thousands of people have donated over £3 million over the past few years to bring legal cases just to be able to talk about these questions without losing our jobs. Several, like me, have gone through gruelling court proceedings.
Meanwhile ministers ploughed funding into organisations like Stonewall to tell the Civil Service, the NHS, schools, and universities that expecting not to see male genitals in women’s changing rooms is “bigotry”, and giving these public bodies marks for how well they repeated the lessons and enforced them on citizens as if they were the law.
While the Government has draped itself in rainbow flags and the easy promise of progressiveness, women have struggled to win back the clarity we had in the Sex Discrimination Act 1975: that men, no matter what they are wearing, do not have the right to enter “female-only” spaces, or compete in women’s sports.
Rishi Sunak now wants to distinguish himself from Sir Keir Starmer, who gave the risible lawyer’s answer to the question of what is a woman by saying that “only 99.9 per cent of women ‘haven’t got a penis’”. But Sunak has done nothing to rectify the situation.
Rather than relying on ordinary women raising even more money to bring the question before judges who are reluctant to pronounce on “trans rights”, or kicking the can down the road until after the election, Sunak should show leadership and support Kemi Badenoch to clarify the Equality Act now.
This could be done with a simple piece of legislation: a one-line amendment to make clear that the definition of the protected characteristic of sex (as in “sex discrimination” and “single-sex services”) relates to biology (i.e. whether someone was born male or female) and is not modified by a gender recognition certificate.
This would simplify the law for everyone. Most trans-identifying people do not have a gender recognition certificate. They should of course be treated with compassion, and protected against discrimination and harassment in housing, education, employment, and services whether they do or don’t have a certificate.
Those who have filled in the online form to get the certificate (which now costs £5) have not necessarily had surgery, nor are they required to. Nor does the certificate claim to change their sex in the eyes of other people, who can still tell whether someone is male or female, however they dress and whatever pronouns they prefer.
When Stonewall and others were arguing that the rules about who could get a certificate should be loosened even further, they said the certificate only conferred legal recognition for a few purposes, such as marriage and pensions. It is clear that a piece of paper cannot change anything relevant when it comes to other people’s rights to privacy, dignity or fairness. Nor should it.
So the answer here should be clear. What are ministers waiting for?
Having the top job in the country means dealing with the questions that everyone else has swerved as above their pay grade. The question of whether women deserve to have spaces, services, and protections, separately from transsexual males, has become one of those questions.
It has landed on the Prime Minister’s desk, and Sunak should get on with the job of being a leader.
The post Maya Forstater: A simple amendment to the Equality Act could protect women’s spaces. What are ministers waiting for? appeared first on Conservative Home.
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Author: Maya Forstater
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