NI Civil Service removed 'mother' and 'woman' from maternity policy at Stonewall's behest

Thanks OP, I've just followed you on Twitter 🍷

[quote SexNotGenderNI]@highame The Alliance Party, Sinn Fein and People Before Profit are all pushing for self ID to be extended to NI. Alliance took around £20k of funding from Ferring Ireland (puberty blocker manufacturers) and sister party LibDems still take Ferring money. People in the network we're in have been having calls with politicians and they're either too scared to speak up or think we're talking about far-fetched scenarios rather than actual changes. And of course they speak to our 'women's organisations' who all say woman now includes some men, so they've no idea of the strength of feeling. We encourage everyone in NI to contact their local politicians and ask them what a woman is. (And then tell the rest of us!)[/quote]
I'm from NI. I'm happy to contact my MLAs to ask the definition of what a woman is. Anything else you'd like me to ask?
I recently read a post from an Alliance MLA complaining about how long people were having to wait on gender reassignment surgery and do you know about the SDLP MLA stating, boys have periods too.
The period poverty bill references 'people who require them'. No mention of women or girls.

Wonder how long before it becomes purely 'parental leave.'

I think there is a very real risk of this.
If surrogacy law changes so that the surrogate mother is not the mother because the commissioning parents acquire legal parenthood at birth where does that leave the newly delivered mother? Not a mother, not a legal parent, so presumably not a birthing parent either and not even a woman.

If more young women follow in the footsteps of The Travelling Surrogate, trading a baby for a year off work to go travelling I suspect companies will start getting a little less than enthusiastic, especially if the SM has done it for a fellow work employee meaning the company gets a double whammy if maternity/paternity leave.

I truly believe writing women out of the birth process is the first step towards removing their protected maternity rights which will be subsumed into parental rights leaving women with nothing protected for women.

I am putting on my hard hat and flack jacket as I know the responses I am likely to get. I want to be clear I am GC but I also believe in equality. Please read all of my post as I cover the use of mother towards the end.

When writing HR policies in relation to all 9 protected characteristics, including sex, gender neutral language such as employee, them and they actually promote equal treatment. For example pay policy, recruitment policy, promotion policy etc.

When writing family friendly HR policies such as Adoption, Maternity, Paternity, Parental and Shared parental leave, using the gender neutral term partner makes policies easier to read and again promotes equal treatment (sexual orientation). This is because a man and woman, two men or two women can get married, be Civil Partners or live together in a committed relationship. Note: these policies also need to be legally compliant and interact sensibly with each other.

Legally adoption has a primary adopter who can be male or female, and a secondary adopter who again can be male or female. Using gender neutral terms such as primary adopter, partner, employee, them and they makes the policy much more straight forward. E.g. “Primary adopters are entitled to 39 weeks statutory adoption pay their partners are entitled to 2 weeks paternity leave “ rather than “Primary adopters are entitled to 39 weeks statutory adoption pay their husband, wife, male or female civil partner or male or female partner are entitled to 2 weeks paternity leave.”

Now the difficult bit, these policies also need to reflect that whilst there is a “Father” who provided the sperm, they may not be in the picture in terms of HR policy. For example two lesbians and one (or both) have a baby, how would they read a policy that states “Fathers are entitled to attend 2 antenatal appointments.” As partners may not be the father I used “Partners are entitled to attend 2 antenatal appointments.”

Now for “Mothers”, I have previously used pregnant employee and surrogate and excluded the word mother. In my defence, at the time it appeared future legislation and case law would support this approach. Thankfully, there has now been case law and legislation reinforcing the very specific role of mothers. If I was drafting these HR policies now I would use Mother but also pregnant employee and partner as appropriate.

The driving force for writing gender neutral policies was actually recognising same sex relationships and underpinning equal treatment for women.

It is only in the last 5 years or so that the Transgender agenda has raised its misogynistic head and is trying to erase women and mothers.

Thanks for that. It's happening everywhere, although when the internal maternity bill for civil servants was debated, parliament insisted the word woman was retained. There was also a backlash about single sex loos, and they have had to re-think this one. When it comes to practicalities, the Gender Ideologists tie themselves in knots or come up against resistance because they hadn't asked

@highame No, these aren't laws, they are internal policies for employees who work for NI Civil Service.

This is the organisation at the centre of government, organisations, businesses and terrifyingly, education. Their open, anti women misogyny literally has no boundaries, yet we're expected to believe Nancy Kelley when she denies they do this.

Well done SexNotGenderNI for revealing what they've all tried to keep hidden.

They done it in Scotland as well.

Removed that awful word mother

Does this mean that the administrative body in NI has taken it upon itself to make law about women without this going through the democratically elected Northern Ireland Assembly.

Well done for your work on this, OP.

The situation does seem especially difficult in N Ireland and Ireland. I know quite a few Irish women and get a general sense of great tension right now.

Good point @Hestyo.

If the reason for removing the words 'mother', 'she' and 'her' is to be inclusive of pregnant transmen who reject those words and want to be called 'father', then the term 'expectant father' is overdue for a redefinition. Otherwise it could mean 'person who is pregnant' or 'person whose spermatozoa were used in the conception'.

Stonewall have dropped the ball on that one.

It says "you may be entitled to paternity leave and pay if you are an expectant father."
Words have been mangled so much I don't know what this means. Are they referring to pregnant trans men (in which case, why remove 'woman' from the other section) or simply the biological father (male)?

I'm just surprised they replied.

They most likely took on all these changes the same way they replied to the FOI request: not realising it had any meaning or consequence at all.

Who is running this show without any consideration or responsibility?

Is anyone going to tell Caroline?:

12:54CarolineNokesWebchat

IcakethereforeIam

Would you have been happy calling the Queenmother the Queenbirthgiver? If not why should it be applied to any other menstruator (including, but not limited to, former and potential menstruators), or, for the sake of brevity, woman?

No - of course not. Nobody is going to stop me calling women women and mothers mothers.

sorry sexnotgenderNI

excellent work sexandgenderNI

Also, how come Stonewall haven't suggested an alternative word/phrase for 'maternity' (or 'paternity')? Is it just the words 'mother', 'she' and 'her' that Stonewall doesn't like?

@yetanotherusernameAgain

I have never seen or heard of an alternative but I could be wrong.

I’ve never heard sperm producer. Maybe they did say prostate havers when talking about prostate exams in health documents, but I don’t think stonewall has officially asked anyone to remove man or father.

It’s only ever women that need to be erased.

It seems to me that a huge part of the TRA is driven by jealousy of women, hence the need to erase and eradicate the vocabulary and tk act like women are obsolete.

It represents the most mysogynistic and hateful aspects of the men’s rights movement.. which is in essence and anti woman movement.

Wait.. so you mean I can take this baby out of me and tell my husband he has to birth it in a few weeks? Why did no one tell me that all I had to do was opt out of this pregnancy and get my husband to do it. It’s so simple ladies..if we just opt out of all the bad parts and painful parts then our lives would be so much easier. Lady brains.. right?!

Thanks for doing this.

Having read the extract from the Paternity Policy (which still uses the word 'father') it struck me - how can 'father' (the biological type) be defined without using the word 'father'? It's easy to replace 'mother' with 'person who is pregnant', but what about 'expectant father'?

Something like: 'person who is expecting the birth of a baby which was conceived with the spermatozoa of said person'?

Does anyone know if Stonewall has ever suggested an alternative word/phrase to use in place of 'father'?