New EHRC guidelines - women only jobs

But you still have nonsense like the MTF who took the hospital to tribunal and the judge ruled it was harassment to ask whether this individual would be undressing in a changing room apparently because the female manager wouldn't have asked an actual woman.

I agree.

The main justification is obsolete now, that male people "identifying" as women couldn't marry other male people.

IMHO issuing GRCs causes more harm to all females, for a minuscule benefit of a tiny number of men....I don't see how any gov't can continue with this farce.

What justification is there?

Yes @IwantToRetire that's the point here. The EA does imply in places that having a GRC is a higher bar to clear. But TRAs have been influencing government departments for years that it didn't make any difference because any male who fancied it could use women's spaces just by "identifying" as a woman.

It is clear as the EA is written, because like it or not the GRA impacted on the protected characteristic of sex.

No other protectec charateristic has to take into account an aquire identity of that characteristic.

So long as the GRA exists and there are GRC to make both "valid" the protected characteristic of sex had to now encompass a "legal" version of sex. Unlike say Race. Nobody can gain a certificate saying that for "all purposes" they should be taken to be part of a race they weren't born into.

And in fact this new guidance would make it really hard for a court to say this guidance is wrong.

And if it is wrong, then a ruling saying that would be saying a GRC has no value or purpose.

@PriOn1 An assessment IS carried out - that is why between 2% and 10% of applications are rejected every year.

Its why Fred Wallace does not have one - he was refused
as were several other high profile TRAs

Is it that they don’t want to bother or that they don’t understand the law or that they don’t want to implement the law if it’ll see them targeted by trans activists?

They have been clear in the past that, if the application includes all the correct paperwork and documentation to comply with the requirements, it will be automatically handed out. There’s no assessment of the person or their history, including any history of criminal offending against women or children.

A few people have asked if you can ask to see a GRC. You don’t need to, you can ask all applicants to show a birth certificate though. Without a GRC it will show the correct sex.

I have always thought that, though I don’t want self-ID, it will be much easier to undermine than the current law. Of course dodgy men will apply, and especially criminals so that they will automatically be processed as female if imprisoned, but uppity women can also apply. If single sex spaces cannot legally exclude someone with a GRC, then all the new Mumsnet Men can cause no end of trouble. Lawbreaking to demonstrate the stupidity of laws has been used to good effect before.

I’m pleasantly surprised so far at the pace of announcements. It feels like the new government have stepped into a big room strewn with all sorts of rubbish, and are making a start tidying up. Tackling the small and easy to pick up bits first while weighing up the massive booby-trapped boulders in the middle of the floor.

Indeed @RhymesWithOrange

Our best hope is that they think it's too much of a hot potato.

Baby steps...

But if Labour make getting a GRC easier we'll be back to square one!

Pre Falkner and in the time of Theresa May, Mordaunt etc, the EHRC was actively producing guidelines saying that MTFs couldn't be excluded from female spaces without good reason.

It's really not clear, and the case is ongoing, so the Haldane ruling will be superseded, for better or worse.

The Lady Haldane ruling was news to many trans rights activists who seemed to think (and had been told by countless organisations and authorities) that the Equality Act 2010 gave them the legal right to access opposite sex spaces and services under the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. Some confusion here about why the guidelines needed to be clarified.

Quote:

Occupational requirements under Schedule 9 must relate to having a particular protected characteristic as defined in the Equality Act 2010. The protected characteristic of ‘sex’ means a person’s legal sex as recorded on their birth certificate or their Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC). This means that a sex-based occupational requirement that an applicant is a woman – as is common within specialist support services for women, such as rape counselling – will include women who are recorded female at birth and also transgender women who have obtained a GRC.

However, Schedule 9 also permits an occupational requirement to exclude transgender persons where it is objectively justified, and this can include those who have obtained a GRC. A ‘sex-based’ occupational requirement to be a woman under Schedule 9 cannot include transgender women who have not obtained a GRC, as they do not have legal status as women under the Equality Act 2010.

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/guidance/guidance-discriminatory-adverts

This is not NEW!!!

This is what it always has been.

This is what the Lady Haldane ruling was based on.

Why are we going round in circles about this.

We need to move onto the next stage.

Getting more organisations and employers to characterise jobs as being (biological) women only.

And then confront the nonsense of the concept of "legal" women who can be used by companies to complain they have reached equality targets as in the example of Women on Boards.

Fair Play for Women have been working on getting more or less these guidelines for the last 6 years. Not everyone agrees with their approach, certainly. But it's incorrect to claim that no one significant has ever claimed that males without GRC who identify as women are included in women only spaces under the Equality Act. Trans rights activists organisations and those that they influence, including government departments, have been claiming this for years. That's what the clarification is about.

The OP (not sure if it is a quote from FPFW) is conflating sex based roles and those deemed "female" roles (no idea what those are).

This comes back to what is really the core of the problem that too many employers dont want to go to the bother of classifying single sex provision.

Has anyone ever drawn up a list of services / jobs that most every day women would expect to use / receive a service in another (biological) woman?

I am well aware of all that. I don't think this guidance is a step forward exactly - it's good that the EHRC state clearly that self ID is not (yet) the law in the UK, but they've been saying that for some time under Baroness Falkner's leadership, and people continue to ignore or misrepresent the law.

Sorry - dont understand what this is about.

As women only as per the SSE in the EA exclude TW with a GRC, why would it then be argued that those without a GRC would be eligible.

Does Fair Play for Women not understand the current law?

Baffling.

It's always been a myth that it wasn't a higher bar to exclude "trans women" with a GRC. I hope this lie has finally been put to rest.

So this is interesting guidance. Labour and trans activists can’t continue to argue that getting a GRC is simply an admin exercise if it opens up the right for men to work in roles reserved only for women.