New EHRC guidelines - women only jobs

In fact maybe this recent statement by the EHRC could be the opportunity to get service providers to be much clearer and open about their services / employment practices.

ie there is nothing to stop any or us finding their local rape crisis centre or domestic violence project to see what they say on their web site. If it refers to service with / by women contact them and ask have they seen this statement from the EHRC. And wouldn't it be better if their web site made clear which version of "woman" they are using. (I know it sounds mad but that's the result of the GRA corrupting the protected characteristic of sex).

Much better that it is clear on their web site, rather than a woman at a moment of stress and in need of help, having to ask this question. (Some rape crisis centres do already do that ie say they are trans inclusive.)

Not sure how or who to contact about any NHS service.

It depends how the service / vacancy is advertised.

ie some women service providers are "trans inclusive" and in fact more groups are being open about this which is good.

But some services / vacancies are advertised as per the SSE in the EA which means that even someone with a GRA can not apply for or provide those services.

This is not new. This has been the case since the GRA changed the status of sex as a protected characteristic.

The only thing that is new, is the statement about self identity.

Which has become necessary because some many people and organisations have fallen for Stonewall mis information.

I don't want a man providing intimate care/ services even if he has a GRC but if I'm understanding this right, the law says he is a woman if he has a GRC and I have to accept female only services from him or I am the one in the wrong.

"Not many employers check GCSE or A level grades, but if it comes to light after taking up a position, you can be sacked for lying without a chance of winning a claim for unfair dismissal"

I was highlighting this in relation to points raised about how employers can know the sex of an individual.

Arguments are often made that it's difficult to 'police' issues relating to who can versus who should access single sex spaces (and jobs). I think these arguments downplay the significance of clarity of the law and the legal expectation to follow the law irrespective of how easy it is to break it.

Whilst there are TRAs who love to publicise that they are breaching norms/expectations/ laws by using provision/spaces designated female only, many/most prefer to seek to undermine claims that transwomen aren't allowed.

The EHRC have said the legal position is that females and males with GRCs are eligible to be employed in female only roles. Issues relating to transwomen deliberately deceiving employers about characteristics that are deemed essential for the job isn't the gotcha or stumbling block that TRAs paint it to be. I don't even think it's relevant to the recent ruling. It is no different to lying about any other criteria, it is unacceptable and any applicant who seeks to mislead on this will be in breech of contract if successful in securing the post.

Where safeguarding checks are needed for a role the same procedures should apply to all, GRC or no GRC. The issues relating to GRCs and DBS checks are a related issue but not the same one as the ERHCs this situation independently of the decision that males.

I am unhappy, but not surprised by the ERHCs conclusions. I think it highlights that the law isn't fit for purpose in terms of upholding the proportionate and legitimate aim of single sex provision. A certificate can hold a lot of power within social and legal systems, but it hold zero power or influence over biology and biology determines sex.

It beggars me that anyone rational can simultaneously hold the belief that being female has no connection to being a woman because a trans women is a women, and the belief that a trans woman qualifies to deliver/access female specific services and support because she is a woman.

I mean, the first definition of womanhood literally disconnects womanhood from the female body while the second relies on it.

The most fundamental belief of genderism and its most fundamental political demands contradict each other. It's total nonsense.

MW was talking about Forth Valley RCC in that interview, not ERCC, which is a rape crisis centre MW managed before ERCC. There is zero chance that MW's trans status was secret when MW joined ERCC relatively recently.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mridul_Wadhwa

It’s always hard to know what to believe with people like this.

In October 2020, Wadhwa sought SNP candidacy for MSP for Edinburgh Central and Stirling constituencies for the upcoming 2021 Scottish Parliament election.

Wadhwa quit the party due to what she described as multiple attacks motivated by her interest in leadership positions within the party; according to Wadhwa, her colleagues angrily objected to her being listed on an all-woman candidate list due to her status as a transgender woman. Wadhwa stated she would still vote for Scottish Independence.

She left the SNP after MSPs backed an amendment to allow survivors of rape and sexual violence to pick the sex rather than the gender of the person examining them.

Wadhwa became Chief Executive Officer of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre in 2021.

MW ability to weave false narratives and have others accept them as facts seems to have been large part of having a sucessful career path plan!

Here is MW in an interview saying they were uncertain if they would even have been hired if ERCC had known that MW was trans.

Is this a true narrative?

Hadm't MW celebrated being a TW at another women's rape crisis service?

The orginal birth certificates is kept, just not accessible to the public. But the government has a list of all GRC holders.

If a GRC holder wants to apply for a job that needs a DBS certificate, they can apply via a special section that is allowed to hide the fact that they have a GRC, and previous names if appropriate.

Thanks to whoever posted this. Really useful information.

I am not saying it will work, but I think making it a criminal offence to falsely apply for a post under the SSE of the EA is the only way to push back.

We know all too well, the be kind approach has been ruthlessly used to undermine women's sex based rights.

But what we have now is too many people, including women, still wanting to be kind. ie as usual, and has been for centuries, women are expected to sacrifice themselves for everyone else.

Not many employers check GCSE or A level grades, but if it comes to light after taking up a position, you can be sacked for lying without a chance of winning a claim for unfair dismissal.

There's a difference between employers saving money and time checking for qualifications that aren't essential and safeguarding.

If a hospital doesnt check the qualifications of their medical staff, not only is the employee going to be prosecuted, the hospital is too - for failing to keep the public safe. If they didnt check the qualifications of the admin officer, the government wouldn't get involved.

Are SSE important enough to be seen as safeguarding or are they seen as the same as someone lying on their CV about GCSEs?

If i were a man wanting a woman only job, and the only consequence was i wouldnt get compensation if found out, i would probably risk it. Meanwhile, lots of woman have been put in a situation were they havent recieved the service they expected and needed.

If SSE are needed, shouldn't it be easy for service providers to recruit the correctly qualified person?

I don't think it was an error. It was on purpose.

The huge error when creating the GRA was to allow falsification of birth certificates. It would have been perfectly possible to create a certificate of “legally being considered the opposite sex for some purposes”, to be used alongside a birth certificate.

That said, such a certificate would so obviously require new and detailed information about when it counted and when it didn’t that it would have been immediately obvious it wouldn’t work. Allowing falsification of fact based documents has just obscured the fact that detailed information about when it counted and when it didn’t was still, realistically required. The duff EA makes it very clear that all a GRC creates is very complicated grey areas around rights that ought to be sex based.

Repeal is the only reasonable action at this point.

"I didn’t say I can never tell, I said I can’t always tell and there are plenty of examples out there of other people getting it wrong. And if a fairly well passing TW has F on his identity documents how are recruiters supposed to know that someone isn’t female?"

Not many employers check GCSE or A level grades, but if it comes to light after taking up a position, you can be sacked for lying without a chance of winning a claim for unfair dismissal.

The TRAs have done a real number convincing people that it's complex to know your own sex, let alone know others'. There are many laws that are difficult to police. There is no-one checking we haven't drunk alcohol before driving. If stopped, invasive procedures are undertaken (breath or blood tests) to confirm. If it came to it, blood tests could reveal sex, and again, despite what the TRAs say, this would not open a flood of DSD cases where there is no telling someone's sex.

The ruling states that only females and males with certificates are entitled to apply for jobs intended to be undertaken by females. This shines a light on Labour's proposal to simplify the process to get a GRC. With this ruling in mind, what process do they think is needed?!

Here is MW in an interview saying they were uncertain if they would even have been hired if ERCC had known that MW was trans. Also saying colleagues were surprised when MW came out to them. Anecdotal of course and the colleagues might have just been being polite and MW might be lying.

I think MW is a great example of someone who is obviously male once you know but it's not the same kind of obvious as when you see Eddy Izzard in the queue for the ladies. I know some people say it's blindingly obvious in every single case but I am not one of those people who can always tell and I doubt I am the only one.

I think the idea of a declaration is a good one. Put it back on the applicant to behave honestly and with integrity. If they lied that would risk their registration if they were a regulated professional. I imagine that would focus the minds of those who would try and go stealth.

We have to work on Repeal. Anything else is a waste of time and won't hold Labour's feet to the fire.

The orginal birth certificates is kept, just not accessible to the public. But the government has a list of all GRC holders.

If a GRC holder wants to apply for a job that needs a DBS certificate, they can apply via a special section that is allowed to hide the fact that they have a GRC, and previous names if appropriate.

The problem with relying on people to declare that they are female at birth, is that it risks mix sex services in a way that the government wouldnt allow for age or lots of skill based employment. People dont self declare they have handling hazardous waste qualifications and everyone crosses their fingers its safe, employers have to make reasonable checks applicants have the qualifications.

But SSE are treated differently. For a start they are voluntary, the GRA and EqA isnt written clearly and there is no id that reliably states a persons sex.

It's as if SSE are purposely difficult to achieve.

Actually could @IwantToRetire 's declaration have something about chromosomes - you declare that you have XX chromosomes. Though I suppose you'd have to introduce a medical test and TRAs would just dispute it. It's hopeless!

@illinivich very well put.

And @IwantToRetire a declaration seems like a good solution. But TRAs would lobby against any such approach - or demand to able to state they are biological women.

These people already assert that they are women, were born women and are biological women. India Willoughby claims to be "indisputably female" - and even to have a cervix I believe.

TRAs believe themselves to be more female than actual women - to be better and exactly the same as real women depending on which state suits them at any given moment. So there's no language that would exclude them fully in a declaration.

I imagine they will wish to have original birth certificates destroyed and hospital records permanently altered too - to reflect that the doctors in the delivery suite 'assigned' them incorrectly. All legal traces of their maleness erased.

Unless all of this current madness is reversed, we have to accept that no one's paperwork is reliable in relation to sex.

Shameless plug for another thread the EHRC have a consultation

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5119846-let-ehrc-know-what-you-think?reply=136808792

That's why they should have to sign a declatation, recognisting that if they are found to have lied to get the job they will be sued.

I wonder if the original birth certificates of those issued new ones in their "legal" sex are actually physically destroyed or are archived somewhere.

And then of course there are hospital records.

There is no identification that reliably gives a persons sex.

That's a problem. If a company needs to employ someone who is over 18, they dont have to rely on the applicant telling the truth, or deciding that they look 18, they use birth certificate or passport. Everyone is protected.

If they want to provide and advertise a single sex service, they need to be able to employ the correct people, but there is no government issued identification that gives sex, where sex means the same for everyone.

This leaves the service provider vulnerable and users at risk.

Didn’t Mridul Wadhwa say they got the position in ERCC by pretending to be female.

Absolutely the opposite which is why not only MW but the management of ERCC should have been censored.

The post was advertise under the SSE of the EA and they then gave it to someone who has always been very open about being trans.

Its just bonkers that everyone accepted it.

Except of course for one brave woman - Roz Adams.

This only goes on happening because too many are complicit with enabling it, along with the full on TWAW campaigners.

Its a sign really of just how far women haven't come that so many have so meekly accepted being told that they are wrong to hang onto the biological identity.

I think, and I know it has been said many times before, it is because the more recent TRAs have made it quite clear that they aren't about supporting people who would like to live gender non-conforming lives.

They are about men imposing themselves on women. This is the end goal.

My solution would be that any post advertised or service advertised as women only under the SSE of the EA, part of the process of applying would be that there is a form where the applicant has to sign saying they have understood that the post / service is for women who were born female and that they confirm this is what they are. And are aware that if it is found they have lied to obtain the job services they will be sued.

My point is that the paperwork is now irrelevant as it has become so messy. But anyway, how many times have you been asked to submit a BC to get a job? Employers rarely even ask for proof of educational attainment anymore. Interviews are the standard test for eligibility and aptitude, with ID and NI number being the main follow up formalities (and more to do with practicalities like pay). And no one is going to ask someone in the ladies to produce a BC.

So the only way to stay safe is to stay alert to strange behaviour. As in time immemorial, women are expected to protect themselves rather than men being policed or forced to adjust their behaviour. Depressing but true.