Inquiry into the Equality Act 2010 - please participate

[LadyJustice]

Please don't forget to respond to the other inquiry. This one is into the Equality Act 2010, which closes tomorrow (Friday).

Key question is this: How easy it is for people to understand and enforce their rights under the Equality Act?

If you can highlight one thing, let it be that ambiguity in the terms male, female, man, woman, gender reassignment, and so on must be reviewed. The amount of public authorities getting all the protected characteristics wrong also needs urgent assessment.

www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/women-and-equalities-committee/news-parliament-2017/enforcing-the-equality-act-launch-17-19/

Do you know if there is any guidance anywhere for this, LadyJustice - a swift, How To Complete guide?

No, there isn't any guidance, unfortunately.

The consultation thing is very off-putting (just like the GRA one) as though it wants to dissuade "the wrong sort" of individual or organisation from responding. It expects councils, lawyers, trade unions and so on, to respond, not mere women.

The main point for me is that the Equality Act gives rights to transgender men at the expense of women and girls.

I’ve been totally flummoxed with this one. But thanks 🙏🏻 I will fill it in as best I can.

clicky link (I hope)

www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/women-and-equalities-committee/news-parliament-2017/enforcing-the-equality-act-launch-17-19/

In the absence of guidance, I can't fill out this consultation. It's too far-reaching, I don't have time to research examples that fall within the scope.

It's a mea culpa for me but I am surprised that neither WPUK nor FPFW have a guide. That said, apart from some discussion on a dyslexia charity website I can't find that there is guidance anywhere from some of the groups that I thought would be asking people to comment on this.

twitter.com/RadFemLawyer/status/1047781082115047425

I have tried to set out prompts and advice today via Twitter.

It is really important that non-lawyers respond. Those personal responses are important. As SpartacusAutisticus says - the Govt need to know how inaccessible the Equality Act is to normal people. The Govt need to know how many public authorities are getting it wrong; how many lists of protected characteristics have you seen that get them wrong? Basic understanding of the EA 2010 is not in the public conscience and it has been 8 years since it was introduced.

I've been putting this one off, because it is confusing. Thank you for the prompt.
Does anyone know if we are required to format the response in any particular way?

Good grief - tomorrow! I've had GRA/Self-ID tunnel vision but will bash out a response to this.

Thanks - this will be a first for me but I will do what I can.

Thanks Spartacus!

Even if you just say we need clear definitions of sex and gender as many councils and other large organisations you would expect to get it right are clearly confused.

I've only recently looked at the supporting guidance on the gov.uk website. It is very clear that you can still provide single sex services if it's justifiable, yet the Equalities Act is forever being misquoted by organisations that could reasonably be expected to know better, including the NSPCC responding to a question I asked "under the Equalities Act trans-people can use whichever toilet they want". That is definitely not what the Act says and the supporting guidance makes this clear so where have they got that idea from?

Ive done it, but can't download my response on the webpage, ill have get help with that.
It wasn't as bad as i thought. just answered what I could.

I've had a stab at it. Thanks to info found on here. Prob badly written but better than nowt.

KingLooieCatz
You hit the nail on the head there. There's a role to play here in public authorities, schools, government bodies and so on properly educating themselves on how the legislation works. This is a barrier to enforcement in itself.

Done!!!! So I found it a bit confusing, but lady justices tweets ( see above ) are really useful. 🙏🏻👋🏻🌻💪🏻

I copied the question onto a doc ( make sure it is word doc) and went through and answered.
I found I had a lot more to say than I thought, when I answered them.

I used an example from RL. I did not answer all the questions, just a couple in detail.

NB you need to say when submitting if you want your response to be **__confidential
and why.

Well, I found that strangely cathartic.

What is the point of equality laws that aren't enforced and that people can't access because legal aid has been removed? Why bother having an Equality and Human Rights Commission if nobody understands what they do or how to get in touch with them?

Every time my rights have been infringed I've been told there is no redress.
GP surgeries can promise access to female HCPs when I sign up with them, only to tell me when I turn to them in crisis that I can choose between seeing the male doctor or not seeing anyone, because the female doctor on duty is only seeing people who have prebooked appointments. My only option was to find a different surgery much further away, and hope they don't do the same when I turn to them in desperate need.

The DWP can remove my lifetime award of disability benefit and tell me I don't qualify for a single point towards the new disability benefit, and I have to scrape together £500 to pay for the legal support needed to present my case to tribunal (who awarded me 15 points out of a possible 24) because legal aid has been removed at the same time as the government rolls out draconian new benefits designed to strip people of the pittances they need to stay alive.

The local psychiatric ward houses male bodied people who identify as women on their women's wards, so that I avoid contacting my local mental health support team when I'm going off my rocker, for fear I'll end up locked on a mixed sex/same gender ward. I'm pretty sure that contravenes my sex based rights, but the hospital tells me that transwomen are women and belong on the women's ward.

So I said I'd appreciate it if they could clearly define the meaning of the word woman to exclude people who were born male. Or, failing that, to provide another legal term for females born female so that we could differentiate ourselves.

I also asked if they could clear up the increasing confusion between sex and gender, to make sure that sex is legally defined very clearly as being a different thing entirely from gender.

Also that transgender and sex based rights both need to be protected and enforced, but one should never be allowed to erase the other.

I ended up by suggesting that, since men are generally larger and stronger, and statistically not at risk of female violence when sharing their spaces with women, it seems fair that if gender neutral spaces are to be provided this should be accomplished by making spaces currently reserved for males gender neutral, to be used by men, transgender people and all the women who see no problem with gender neutral facilities. Leaving women’s sex segregated spaces for female sexed women only. And that this is something they could promulgate as best practice if it was infeasible to provide separate gender neutral facilities, since it was very unfair towards disabled people to have their toilets used by healthy transgender people when disabled toilets were already few and far between.

Just done it. Posted on a different thread. Now reading all these posts and wishing I had done it better.

I feel the same Invisible but we've done it. I really emphasised the points of definitions.
I also wrote in the additional info box a very long rant about why many women have to be anonymous.

Lady and Pencils advice has been so helpful, along with the poster who pasted their submission on Twitter (are you a MNetter?)