To call for this charity to be sued under UK equality act ?!

So all women events should be banned too… so many threads on this one charity run. Someone must be working overtime.

Exactly this. Women only race? No problem! Men's only race? Cool. A race for girls under 12 and boys/ men of ANY age? Not ok. Not compliant with the equality act legislation. Discriminatory, illegal, unethical and misogynist.

What you are missing is (from the MCR website itself, in their own words):

Open to everyone: runners, walkers, and children (girls under 12 and boys of any age)

If they had made it open to men only, and all children under 12, they would not have fallen foul of the current EA. But clarifying female children as only those who are under 12, but male children can be of any age, is the problem.
That is discriminatory, very clearly, against the female children over the age of 12.

The reasons why they consider males to be children at any age (presumably before they reach majority) but females to only be children if they are under 12 hasn't been confirmed. And it was a question repeatedly asked of the men who turned up to defend this on the thread in FWR yesterday - they steadfastly refused to answer it....

So why is there an investigation underway as to whether it breaches the equality act ?

The mayor of Tower Hamlets was supporting this, doubling down on the fact that it’s a male only race - which it quite clearly isn’t.

Muslim women have been objecting - they’ve just been ignored though.

Who are you reporting it to?

I’m not doing anything.

Nope, not unless they allow male children under the age of 12 and ban them once they reach that age. There is no way that this is a men only race. It includes female children under the age of 12. Why is that ?

Report it of course! What are you going to do?

I think they marketed it wrongly, in calling it a family friendly inclusive event.
If its a mens only run, fine. Call it that.
But its billed as a family event..... that only half your family are allowed to participate and the other half are invited to watch and cheer

But they allow male children of any age to participate. There is no justification, especially as it was funded with London Marathon money and Muslim girls have huge cultural and practical barriers to their participation in sport.

There's nothing illegal here.

First, it's important to be clear that this is a fundraising activity, not benefits provision from a charity. A mosque is not a charity whose stated purpose is to provide athletics opportunities to a specific group or the general public; the purpose of this event is to raise money for The EA treats these two types of activities differently. Most of the references to the EA here have been from the portions that address discrimination in provision of benefits, but those don't actually apply to fundraising activities.

Religious organizations have fairly broad rights to hold activities and restrict participation in ways that are consistent with its faith tenets. The catholic church does not have to ordain women or married men as priests, appoint divorced people to leadership positions, or employ openly gay Sunday-school teachers, to name some obvious examples. And religious organizations can generally hold public events whose rules and requirements for participation adhere to their faith tenets, including one that says that after childhood/puberty people of the opposite sex don't do certain activities together in public.

So what are you going to do to not let this one go?!

I'm miffed at all this talking and not one person willing to actually do something about it

Because it's a slippery slope to our human rights being eroded. So, we let this one go under the guise of no one being particularly harmed or offended and it is ' only' a fun run, but then what's next? Where do we draw the line? or do you just want to do away with the equality act and the ehrc entirely and see what happens? I Quite like the protection it affords but if you think differently ...

That sounds suspiciously like sensible and practical action but I think OP wants to screech hysterically into the internet to create awareness in a completely ineffectual way instead 😂

Why are you working so hard to try and justify this?

Do you not think Muslim women should have equal rights (whether they choose to exercise those rights is obviously their ‘choice’) .

You may as well just say “I support the patriarchy”.

Is this supposed to be a 'men only run but children (boys, and girls aged 12 and under) can also join' or is it specifically a 'run for men, boys and girls 12 and under'?

I think that would make the difference.

The former would be like a women only changing room but children (girls, and boys of a certain age) are allowed too.

You seem to be missing the part where only female children over 12 are excluded. Male children over 12 are not.

Can you justify that?

You are acting as if the wrong here is blindingly obvious but I don’t think it is.

If you think a male-only run would be OK, who has been harmed by additionally allowing girls to run?

Women haven’t been harmed (they weren’t allowed before, which you were fine with, and aren’t allowed now).

Girls can now run when they couldn’t before (presumably a benefit).

Males have been deprived of a single-sex run, but they haven’t been deceived, and we don’t usually think of fun-runs as the type of service that needs to be single-sex. Even if we do, that wouldn’t impose an obligation on this specific fun-run to be single-sex. We don’t, in other words, expect all fun-runs to be single sex.

I get that EA2010 might make this problematic. But I still don’t think it’s as morally clear-cut as you seem to think.

What am I missing?

Agreed. There has been a recent prosecution of an imam who ignored child marriage laws and married minors.

Teachers and people who work with children have training how to spot signs of forced marriage - girls being taken abroad to be married, often underage.

We have new laws to stop the practice of FGM (not exclusive to but the greatest proportion of nationalities are overwhelmingly Muslim countries bar one (Eritrea which is split Muslim and Christian).

We obviously have a line of what is acceptable behaviour for residents of this country - we just need to make sure it is in the right place. Why should we accept discrimination against Muslim women in the name of religion?

Countries with which UK residents are most likely to have links and which have a high prevalence of FGM, noting that estimates of FGM vary over time and between data sources
Change to table and accessible view
Estimated prevalence of FGM¹ (%)
Somalia 98
Egypt 87
Sudan 87
Sierra Leone 86
Eritrea 83
Gambia 76
Ethiopia 65

www.gov.uk/guidance/female-genital-mutilation-fgm-migrant-health-guide

They won't, that's not how the EA works. A case would need to be brought by an individual who is directly affected.

Charity Commission might theoretically help but they only seem to care about financial irregularities and occasionally safeguarding.

EHRC would likely be more helpful but they only have the capacity to bring action on a tiny minority of discrimination cases.

In any event, the first step would be a formal complaint to the charity.

Section 13(1):

(1)A person (A) discriminates against another (B) if, because of a protected characteristic, A treats B less favourably than A treats or would treat others.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/part/2/chapter/2/crossheading/discrimination

This applies across the board unless an exception specifically makes it lawful to treat people differently.

There are a fuckton of exceptions in the EA but I can't find one they could use for the particular way this event has been set up and advertised. Can you?

The reasons for banning men from a women's run are totally different than the reasons for banning women from a men's run.
They're not some kind of mirror image of each other.

Actually it isn’t. The example includes anyone who ‘identifies as a woman’ so would be problematic under U.K. law.

I've read an article about Muslim women taking part in the London marathon. It can't be assumed at all that Muslim women won't want to run.