Can anyone help? GC stance on trans women on women shortlists

Transwomen are Men, therefore they shouldn’t be on AWS, anybody disagreeing with this is gaslighting.

The Labour Party introduced the post of Women’s Officer years ago when men dominated all the elected positions in the party. Women’s Officers helped shape policy on things like affordable child care and organised events to encourage women to stand for political office.

That did improve women’s representation but it remained clear that very few women were being selected to run in winnable seats. Hence the policy of all women shortlists. They were an incredibly successful way of improving the number of women in politics - think Labour in 1997 and the Conservatives in 2010 after Cameron’s A list.

Most political parties have problems attracting enough volunteers so the reality was that most volunteers for being a women’s officer were elected. Being an officer means people are more ‘visible’ to members and so it’s a good role for anyone who wants to be selected to run as a local councillor or MP. There are rules that constituencies must include at least one woman on their parliamentary candidate shortlist and in certain constituencies Head Office stipulated that the shortlist was to be all women. Local members then vote from the shortlisted candidates.

Lily Madigan ran as Women’s Officer and this was agreed by a Labour HQ. Official Labour policy is that self identifying as a woman is the only requirement to hold a women’s officer post or stand on an all women shortlist.

Without getting personal or mentioning any names, being a women’s officer is often a stepping stone to being selected on an all women shortlist. Of course there are other routes - local Labour parties have youth officers or diversity officers as well as being the Secretary/Chair/Treasurer. The question is whether it would be fairer for a politically ambitious transgender woman to stand for one of those posts. This is why it has been controversial - women were already under represented and expanding the criteria to self ID candidates means that they may be even less likely to be elected.

The other point is that some candidates get the support of Momentum. They have many members and good comms so a candidate with their support is at a huge advantage in most constituencies.

Sorry - this is a long winded way to say the policy may place women ‘assigned female at birth’ at a disadvantage. The wider point is that women’s votes were widely held to have helped Labour win in 1997. This was because the party increased its credibility with women. Arguably, the policy does nothing to address the wider question of engaging 52% of the electorate.

"They're not women. Simple as that."

This, a thousand times over and more.
I had a discussion with a mate about this last week, and he said - "What if they feel like a woman?".
I simply replied - "How would they know, they are male bodied and have gone through puberty in a substantially different way to women"

AW panels and shortlists should be all women - adult human females observed female at birth NOT males however they feel or present.

Female bodies are different to males and because of that we suffer. Whether as foetus being aborted, socialised to be more submissive and put the feelings of others first, physically weaker, child bearers...

Males on the other hand are the desired heirs, socialised to put themselves first, they are statistically far more violent, physically stronger... no one born and socialised in this class can ever be female, they can never truly understand what it is to be female.

I won't vote Labour as long as people with no experience of our biological reality are supposed to be representing women. I would rather they gave up on AWS altogether. If transpeople are under-represented in politics, then the men can budge over for once.

Women’s only shortlists are there to address the imbalance between male and female people in leadership roles.

No, afraid not. Requiring women only on shortlists is NOT allowed as a general HR policy for leadership roles etc.... it is ONLY allowed in the specific case of shortlists for parliamentary candidates.

(just trying to avoid us tripping up)

They're not women. Simple as that.

There is a legal case starting about the question of who should be on AWS

They say: "As socialists we understand class analysis and we know the most meaningful way to classify women is by sex. Women are classified as second class citizens because of our biology. None of us can keep our sex a secret and if we could there would be no pay gap and no #MeToo. Whereas no one can tell what another person's gender identity is (if they even have one) just by looking at them. Sex, along with poverty, age, disability and race, is one of the major oppressive hierarchies in the world today. Women's biology has always the basis for our oppression worldwide BY MEN. Feminism is defined as the movement to liberate all women from sex-based oppression. "

AW Shortlists are specifically allowed in the Equality Act for political candidates, but not for other roles (unless it is a genuine occupational requirement like you need a female actress) -- to try to get a better representation of the population in parliament.

Political shortlists are allowed to be limited to a single sex, but not allowed to be restricted on the basis of other protected characteristics (e.g. race, disability, gender reassignment)

The EHRC say that in the Equality Act under the protected characteristic sex "Women" means what it says on your birth certificate. This suggests that transwomen with a GRC (i.e. who have legally changed the sex on their birth certificate) should be allowed on AWS, but not transwomen who remain legally male.

...... that's the legal position ......but what the labour party & greens? have done is allowed self identified TW onto AWS.

so you can argue from a position of principle i.e. if the aim of the policy is to get a better representation of the population i.e the 50% born female, then 'gender identity' should be irrelevant. Females who identify as non-binary would not be barred from inclusion, why should males who identify as feminine be included...

-- or you can argue from the position of law that transwomen with a GRC can be on AWS, but the parties are breaking the law if they extend this to self identified transwomen

Post edited by MNHQ

Being a biological female effects your working life in a detrimental way because even if you never have children it is assumed you will.
Though there is legislation in place to stop female bodied people (women) being discriminated in the work place in practise it happens very regularly that women are passed up for promotion/ a job because the employer doesn’t want to train someone up then they go on maternity leave.

Women’s only shortlists are there to address the imbalance between male and female people in leadership roles.

I would much rather trans men applied for AWS. I’d have no issue with that, but of course it won’t happen.

Because it’s about validation.

The reason why women need women’s only shortlist’s is biological more than anything. Women mostly loose out because of child rearing. That said I completely disagree with women’s only shortlist’s etc because it masks inequality instead of addresssing the causes.

Now I’m off for a snack.

I am absolutely against it. Transwomen are not born female and do not grow up a girl, living a girls life before entering womanhood where they live a woman’s life. They cannot accurately represent women’s viewpoints or have considered compassion for women’s needs through personal experience because they are not biological women.