Anyone want to help me sort Sport England out?

[RhymesWithOrange]

Sport England's equality and diversity action plan leaves out sex as a protected characteristic.

https://www.sportengland.org/media/13465/diversity-6-2.pdf

Sport England's safeguarding guidance (delivered through the Child Protection in Sport Unit) also leaves it out (co written by the NSPCC who have also been reluctant to talk about trans issues):

https://thecpsu.org.uk/media/445554/webcpsustandards-final-2.pdff_

I've tweeted SE but not had a reply yet. You can find me on Twitter (same as my user name here) or contact them yourselves.

This is important because all sports bodies will look to SE for guidance. It's one of the foundations on which they will decide their own policies on women and girls in sport.

TIA

Can you post a link to your twitter as there are 4 Rhymeswithorange

You are absolutely right. Sports Clubs often need the Sport England ClubMark to gain access to Public Authority and school sports facilities. They and their poorly-resourced sports governing bodies look to Sport England for guidance.

This is MAJOR.

I looked at Sport Scotland and am pleased they have separate equality reports for women in sport and gender reassignment and sport. sportscotland.org.uk/about-us/equality-at-sportscotland/equality-and-sport-research/

@ with_rhymes

And thank you again

Charter mark for football clubs too FA guidance.

Also the Youth Sport Trust, arguably even more important for children's safe participation in sport neglects sex in it's list of protected characteristics. I'll get onto them now.

The National Governing Body of each sport needs to be checked. There are about 50 of them. I'll work my way through them alphabetically...

This report here I thought was very good on barriers to increasing trans & LGB participation in sport & physical activity: www.sportengland.org/media/11116/pride-sport-sport-physical-activity-and-lgbt-report-2016.pdf
I'm a HUGE believer in the benefits of sport for everyone, particularly for people for whom mental health & body image could be issues, so I would be very interested to see how Sport England could aim to increase participation from marginal communities.
However, I also have a daughter who is just starting out in competitive swimming, so I am also very concerned about how safeguarding will be managed where communal facilities may be all that exist, and also crucially the need to balance fairness & equality in competition. There's no question that she would be unfairly disadvantaged when if competing against a trans girl for a squad or podium place, and if she progresses to contact sports like rugby and hockey as I did, then it could potentially place her at great risk of physical injury (more than if she was playing solely against female-bodied peers).
I'll contact Sport England.

This could make things a little skewed, though:

We're also nuturing close relationships with organisations that have an emphatic grasp of the groups they represent. For instance in 2017 we strengthened our ties with Stonewall to tackle the unique challenges of LGBTQ+ sports participation

Hopefully they have equally strong ties with Women In Sport (who I'd never heard of and who I hope know what a woman is)

Good point. I need to look into Women in Sport.

You may find some input from Edward Lord here, I'm sure they were involved with the FA

Also Delia Johnston: metro.co.uk/2015/10/21/transgender-woman-on-her-desperate-struggle-with-her-new-identity-and-how-she-was-accepted-by-the-fa-but-not-her-daughter-5376352/?ito=cbshare

UK Sport
Uksport.gov.uk

UK Sport embraces the spirit of all equalities legislation and is committed to eradicating any form of unfair discrimination. We will not tolerate discrimination either directly or indirectly, on the grounds of race, disability, class or social background, religious belief, sexual orientation, ethnic or national origins, gender, marital status, pregnancy, parental status, age, colour or political persuasion.

Embracing equalities legislation and getting it wrong!