How is this happening? Why aren’t companies etc. adhering to the equalities act?

As the judicial reviews have recently repeatedly concluded: women need to start bringing cases to sue and force the law to be applied.

This because the underlying processes are not technically illegal. However women’s rights are being undermined because exemptions are not being applied and are entirely voluntary under the current law. The laws are not fit for purpose and judicial review can only ensure the laws are applied. They cannot modify them.

I suspect for legal changes to occur, women are going to have to prove over and over that their rights are being breached on an individual basis to a level where the fact that their laws are inadequate to protect women can no longer be ignored by lawmakers. There are no short cuts, as the failure of the judicial reviews (and the related comments from judges) indicate.

What the Government ignored was despite the fact that The Equality Act was not a new piece of legislation (it replaced existing equality legislation), many employers were still discriminating against employees, and many middle managers were still receiving no training in employment law.

That lack of training in employment law is usually presented as 'equality training' and not 'legal compliance training' and imo that changes the way people think about it.

As well as all the previous answers; because the people who are affected by discrimination are the ones who have to find the money to bring a case.

There was a consultation in 2012, after which the govt decided to ignore the overwhelming support for the original system and weaken the powers of employment tribunals, which basically left the wolves in charge of the sheep.

Equality Act 2010: employment tribunals’ power to make wider recommendations in discrimination cases and obtaining information procedure
''We want to encourage employers to tackle weaknesses in their equality policies and practices; and we want those who think they
may have been discriminated against to be able to explore the facts with the employer or service provider without going to court or an employment tribunal.''
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/136235/consultation-response.pdf

Another thread here about the parliamentary debates around the GRA. All the current problems were recognized and raised at the time as potential unintended consequences, but were brushed aside, largely on the grounds that it was only going to affect a tiny group of around 5,000.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3103653-Gender-Recognition-Bill-2004-Hansard-records

As above. Because a very wealthy, government funded, male led and male dominated organisation has repeatedly misrepresented the law to fit their own agenda and best interests, and unfortunately a huge number of those who should have engaged their brains and done their jobs better, wrongly trusted and fell for it. They wrongly believed that they were dealing with impartial experts instead of a partisan and controversial political lobby group with a very definite male-centric agenda.

As the judicial reviews have recently repeatedly concluded: women need to start bringing cases to sue and force the law to be applied.

Thanks, I'll read through that. Am I right in thinking that David Lammy was the government minister in charge of steering the GRA through Parliament back in 2004? He must surely have had briefings back then from experts who would have provided him with statistics and details about medical and psychiatric care for transgender people. I appreciate it's a long time ago, but if he's going to spout off about this issue he should refresh his memory on the details, which quite definitely can't have included the assertion that the minority of transwomen who have sexual reassignment surgery end up with a cervix as part of the construction of the neovagina.

I have bumped an old thread for any readers new to this who are interested to understand more.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3463920-Lets-go-back-to-2007

“There are international laws - eg the Geneva conventions say that prisoners of war must have separate sex accomodation. It was felt necessary to spell it out in that case to a foreign country.”

The Geneva convention doesn’t state single sex, as far as I am aware. It states that women should be imprisoned in separate accommodation from men. We are now being told that men who claim they are women are women.

This neatly sidesteps all the requirements for the massive legal changes to laws that would be required to admit this group of men, where women already had specific protection.

I suspect this is one of the main reasons transactivism is now almost entirely concentrated upon ensuring that men who claim they are women are considered to be women. You will note that many human rights groups now have succumbed to the pressure from well-funded international lobby groups and do consider some men to be women.

Our laws have been undermined over many years and it has only recently become apparent that it has occurred and what it means. There is little doubt that this has been done entirely deliberately and with extensive planning. It has not come about by some kind of happy accident. It goes back way beyond Stonewall. Even the GRA was brought in under the radar, as stated by transactivist C. Burns in an interview with the Guardian.

It is going to take a great deal of effort to return from this position as it is now well-established and though our laws have all been undermined without consultation, when we try to reverse that situation, we are accused of trying to remove established rights.

Single sex provision is legal if it is a “proportionate means to a legitimate end” in any context- regardless of GRC. As many others have said, the legitimate end has always been the safety, privacy and dignity of women.

Yes. Whereas there is, afaik absolutely no legal basis for 'single gender' provision . How could there be, when unlike sex which is binary and immutable, 'gender' is not binary - where do 'Nonbinary' or 'agender' people fit into this?
Oh, they choose whichever they feel more comfortable in... but as Mishy says, 'Feeling uncomfortable is not a legitimate purpose.'

“Feeling uncomfortable is not a legitimate purpose”.

Irony klaxon.

In past times it wasn't necessary to legislate on this point because common sense was applied and the above obvious points were takens as read. Now that common sense has fled the building, it may be necessary to get this into law after all.

Is that what you were looking for?

Prisons, well they do a risk assessment on the individual to validate they are genuine and will not harm fellow prisoners.

Who are “they”?
What does the risk assessment involve?
What does “genuine” mean?
What definition of “harm” are you using here?

Where can I find out more about this rigorous process that guarantees no women will be harmed by the placing of a biological male in the female estate?

Mishy gives a perfect demonstration of the problem - a complete dismissal of the need full single sex exemptions.

You'll note that some people miss the point and make it about "trans".

The EA2010 exceptions are what permit any sex separation.

If you believed the EA2010 exceptions did not apply to a case, then it would be fully mixed-sex. Not "women + transwomen".

Since the Gender Recognition Act, the legal ability to alter one’s records, including birth certificate, to claim to be the opposite sex has complicated matters.

Sex segregation is possible where there is a legitimate purpose under the EA2010 Act.

Probably an open changing room would be suitable, but a department store with its own cubicles for changing would unlikley to pass the test.

Prisons, well they do a risk assessment on the individual to validate they are genuine and will not harm fellow prisoners.

Feeling uncomfortable is not a legitimate purpose. You could use the same argument to discriminate against any other woman you felt make you uncomfortable - and that would be a slippery slope.

The EA act has been in place for 11 years, and quite simply there have not been major issues. The odd case of course, but you get bad eggs across all sections of the community. It's not a reason to fear transwomen trying to live their lives like the rest of us.

The history of this is that women didn't have separate public spaces.

Women fought for them and created them and eventually they became a de facto reality. Women's toilets in workplaces and public spaces so women could participate in public life.

But they were never a legal requirement generally. They were just something that became common practice.

So there is actually no legal provision for single spaces as it stands?

There is legal provision to permit them. But generally not to require them.

There are regulations about single-sex toilets in schools, for example.

But generally otherwise, no.

There was a judicial review about putting men in women's prisons, and the conclusion of the judge was "this may be shit for women, but it's not illegal per se". The challenge would have to come from an "indirect sex discrimination" claim.

There are international laws - eg the Geneva conventions say that prisoners of war must have separate sex accomodation. It was felt necessary to spell it out in that case to a foreign country.

But it never occurred to anyone to make it law within this country.

Stonewall have been lying to corporations and businesses for years. This has been absolutely proven and reported on.

Why they are still allowed to be a charity and receive tax payers money, is criminal.

There is also the reason that organisations can earn lots of brownie points by saying they are “inclusive” - for example M&S allowing people to choose whichever changing room they want to use, despite the fact this then excludes women who cannot share with men. The flip side is that anyone complaining is painted as a hateful bigot.

So no one is going to want to rock the boat so organisations get away with imposing mixed sex spaces with no apparent objections and being applauded for it.

It's not just Stonewall though, this has been going on far longer than Stonewall.

Press for Change talk about the legal history.

There's a definite contradiction in understanding. It's clear Press for Change believe single sex exemptions were written as mixed sex by default on a choice basis. Which is nonsensical obviously.

If you take them on face value it reads the opposite way which is a bit of a no brainer, why have a single sex exemption set out in law one way when it means the opposite.

This is where we are, pushing back against the concept of mixed sex single sex facilities.

Because stonewall have been misrepresenting the law for years and telling them that single sex spaces are illegal