Citizens' Assemblies would pretty much exclude anyone with caring responsibilities and especially those tied to the school day - disproportionately women.
This is a big concern I think - one of the reasons (IMO) that women's rights have been so easily swept aside as unimportant & 'flexible' to accommodate males who 'feel like women' is because a large proportion of women are bogged down with caring responsibilities that mean the weekday, during the normal working week, there's automatically a barrier there when you've got either work with childcare or you may have an elderly or disabled family member you're responsible for, or you are in receipt of care for your own disabilities etc. That's a huge & important section of the population excluded before you even start.
I think there needs to be a better model determined to ensure fair & equitable engagement & tbh the online meetings we've all been forced into in lockdown are more accessible when you do have caring responsibilities.
Suggesting that people can just take time off work, if you're a working parent, ignores the fact (for me anyway) you're trying to stretch 5 week's annual leave across 13 weeks school holidays & it's not as easy as just taking time off - that then impacts the cost of child care you need to add onto what you already budget for, as you lose more annual leave.
Engender & the NACWG vanity project that Sturgeon set up (I suspect as a distraction to the growing concerns both Scotgov & their core third sector women's orgs they funded didn't want to listen to or give any airtime to) consistently set up meetings that were scheduled when it was most difficult for working class women, working parents, unpaid carers etc. And the NACWG specifically refused to allow any discussion on the clashes over sex & gender ID. I don't think any of this was 'accidental'.
It allows those without caring responsibilities to be more able to shape & direct the agenda, and that's been a disaster for women in Scotland to date.
I don't know if the NACWG is an example of, or similar to the citizens assembly suggestion, but that was micro managed to the nth degree & wasn't in any way conducive to ever resolving the clash of rights & concerns. It was an appalling unrepresentative exercise that ended up with bizarre suggestions about 'intersectional gender architecture' & 'gender beacons' 🤨 It smacks of middle class naval gazing IMO.
That's my worry with this - the very people who see & will experience many of the consequences of policy that impact women's sex based rights - to female only carers, HCPs, support etc. will have significant barriers to overcome to even participate.
I'll have a look at the link posted, but I still think there's a lot of safeguarding work needing to be done before you even get to the 'citizen's assembly' stage & that takes time & research too. The impact on women hasn't been researched properly at all. That's vital IMO.