Some seats in the House of Lords are only open to males.

[GrimmaTheNome]

Is there any possible justification for this?

Which do you mean? Bishops? C of E is on to that. The one that invariably is accorded to the Chief Rabbi? Not sure if anything can be done about that.

are there any that are only open to females?

if there are equal number of gender restricted seats it seems fair to me, otherwise no

are there any that are only open to females?

The CofE Bishops was what I had in mind.

As C of E is in the throes of changing, then it's a self-extinguishing issue.

How long will it take them though - its been under discussion for years. And if/when there are female bishops, the way they are appointed to the HOL is to wait for a vacancy and then the most senior bishop is appointed so its going to be a heck of a long time before women could filter through into these positions.

Not really a good defence of the status quo.

I'm not particularly defending anything. Just pointing out that changes to the specific issue are underway.

My big bugbear is less to do with that there are no female bishops and therefore women are excluded from these posts, but that there's clergy in the House of Lords in the first place.

If there was complete seperation between church and politics, a lot of sexist issues would fall by the wayside immediately.

Oh you disestablishmentarians.

Yeah, get us and our objections on all sorts of grounds to those antidisestablishmentarianists.

(sorry but I just love the excuse to use that word legitimately outside of a quiz )