Welsh Assembly and the lost equality impact assessment

Here's the link to the EIA information:
www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/advice-and-guidance/equality-impact-assessments?fbclid=IwAR2ADGpVybs228Yw3D9kqRzVBPxNV7iAz5DE9fpU_wER0MTCZHBd4-JVjTE
The 'myth busters' link on the page is very clear re requirements.

Lots of response on twitter too.

Can you link to that? I'm not on twitter.

FOIrequester - fantastic to find you here and thank you so much for pursuing this. Shero of the revolution. Lots of response on twitter too. It's not going to go away.
Just dashing off but will repost the link shortly and will DM you if I may? Several of us are intending to take action and it would be good to co-ordinate.

Oldstyle
Here's what they should have done - bit of a gap between theory & practice.

The link in your post doesn't work for me. Can you post another link, or tell me what search terms will find it? It might be useful for me to be able to quote their own words back at them.

AGirlHasNoCake
Please feel free to join me in FOIs to Welsh Gov. It's very easy to do on the whatdotheyknow site, and you don't have to give your real name if you want to be anonymous.

The idea of 'passing' is laughable. People who look male, sound male, smell male, move male stand out a mile..

This. With knobs on.

(That's just an expression where I'm from.)

Thanks for starting this thread, thatdamnedwoman. I'm the person who made the FOI request. It followed a series of emails to the Welsh Government over several months. I was struggling to get any straight answers to my questions, just obfuscation and answers to questions I didn't ask.

In an email a year ago, I asked Welsh government if they had carried out an Equality Impact Assessment for the Transgender Action Plan. They replied that they had (but didn't attach it). I asked to see it and was told that they couldn't locate it, so I did the FOI. After their final 'bog off' reply in June, I was unsure what to do next. I probably should have posted something here, because there have been some great suggestions on this thread. I didn't go to the Information Commissioner, because I don't think the problem is to do with compliance with FOI procedures, but to do with the workings of Welsh Government. I suspect that no impact assessment was actually done, or if it was, it was inadequate and so they 'lost' it.

I will try and put together another FOI based on the suggestions by Michelle and others on this thread and also write to the Minister for Equalities in Welsh Gov., who I think is currently Jane Hutt (it's not very clear from the website, so if anyone knows otherwise, please let me know). Not that any of this gets anywhere near an actual minister as far as I can tell - all the responses to my emails have come from the Equalities office, even when I wrote to Kirsty Williams (Education Minister) about issues relating to safeguarding in schools and educational issues arising from the use of the TransForm Cymru toolkit, which was funded by Welsh Government.

The "passing" thing is just one aspect of the overall delusion. Women used to be polite about it (some probably still are) in order to preserve the person's feelings. It seemed cruel to say: "Newsflash - you will never pass."

as if women can't tell a transsexual male from a female in the majority of circumstances

This attitude is deeply annoying and oh so prevalent. The constant claims of 'but transwomen have been using your spaces for years and no one noticed or if they did, minded'. Um, yes we did notice, and yes we did mind. I know I'm not alone in having walked out of women's spaces upon finding an XY trans person there. I know because I've had conversations with other women saying the same thing dating back years.

The idea of 'passing' is laughable. People who look male, sound male, smell male, move male stand out a mile in women's spaces. Of course we can bloody tell the difference.

Has Leanne Wood commented on this yet?

“A profound conceptual change” in our understanding of what it means to be a woman or a man has been taking place “without due diligence, democratic oversight or scrutiny”

www.holyrood.com/articles/news/scottish-trans-policy-detrimental-women-and-girls

www.heraldscotland.com/news/17800511.snp-women-39-s-convener-criticised-insisting-canadian-trans-woman-jessica-yaniv-39-female-predator-39/

Sexual violence is a gendered phenomenon which is overwhelmingly committed by men. 98 per cent of sexual assaults are committed by men as are most violent crimes. Any analysis has to recognise that reality.

So many of these policies seem to have been implemented on a 'women will just have to learn to deal with it' attitude.

This started with the GRA 2004. They never asked women, they (mostly men) decided what we didn't know wouldn't hurt us, as if women can't tell a transsexual male from a female in the majority of circumstances... And now it's not even transsexuals.

Can’t seem to find anything relevant about my local council....

Also here:

wgscotland.org.uk/discussion-papers/

Losing Sight of Women’s Rights: the unregulated introduction of gender self-identification

Tracing the piecemeal introduction of self-identified gender identity principles from 2001 onward, the analysis shows how decision-making on the sex question has been shaped by a reference to a limited group of interests that have excluded those of women.

The current policy direction, which conflates sex and gender identity, carries significant risks in terms of data quality and reliability.

It is clear that public authorities have repeatedly failed to assess properly the impact on other groups who have specific protections under the Equality Act 2010, as the Act requires, and that little thought has been given to the possibility that such policies might be open to abuse by individuals with malign intent, irrespective of gender identity.

There has been such a persistent failure to consider the possible wider impacts of gender self-identification, especially on women, and the adequacy of institutional safeguards against well-organised lobbying.

Thanks for sharing this, what a shit show indeed. Checking my council now.

I just wanted to pop a note of this here from another thread:

We wanted to bring your attention to an article in the academic journal Scottish Affairs, which has been published today. It’s about gender self-identification, Scottish public policymaking and policy capture, a topic we’ve seen debated in FWR on more than one occasion!

We’re delighted to say the article is published on an open access basis, so you can all read the full text and share it as you see fit on social media and elsewhere.

www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/scot.2019.0284

Thanks for raising this OP - twitter has also been full of it. It absolutely does need to be investigated. Careless, patronising and inadequate at best; anti-democratic and corrupt seems more likely. Another sign of regulatory capture it seems.

Scandalous. Thank you for posting - placemarking for a proper read later.

Bump

@thatdamnedwoman

I'm in Wales, this is scandalous. When you said "If others could contact local councils"
did you mean outside Wales?

Happy to contact my local Welsh council but obviously no point if same replies as yourself etc

Sorry, I'm rushing!

the Welsh government issues guidance on how to do a EIA here

I want to write and ask for the documents by step now!

I suspect a lot of arse covering now going on.

oooh...please tell me there was a complaint further to the 6th june response?

Did E WIlliams go back and ask for all emails? Welsh and ENglish? All minutes? Did they go to the information commissioner? Lodge a formal complaint at westminster? I am ridiculously invested in this - and outraged.

I know @OccasionalKite hence the reason I mentioned that individual businesses are left to their own devices.

Have reported Brain06626 on other threads. They're just being pathetic.