Help please - club constitution

[Littlegreenegg]

Children’s sports club having its AGM soon. Proposing changes to constitution to say they will adhere to the Equality Act, but list “gender or gender identity” as a protected characteristic and leave out sex (as well as a couple of others).

I’ve drafted an email pointing out that this isn’t what the Act says.

I’m trying to retain some perspective as this could be a well intentioned and innocent action.

So do I just point out the inaccuracy and see how they react before voicing my concerns, or put my view out there now?

Any advice welcome.

I'd wait for them to come back on your email, see what they say before further action.

So do I just point out the inaccuracy and see how they react before voicing my concerns, or put my view out there now?

Yes, its very important that the legislation is quoted correctly.

It is protecting the club.

The policy has to be first written correctly so that it might then be applied correctly.

It may be a mistake made in good faith as most Diversity policies use what they believed to be trusted sources which are also incorrect.

NCH recently corrected theirs when advised of the similar error.

The Equality Act 2010 with 9 protected characteristics. One is 'sex' and one is 'gender reassignment' these should be as written. 'gender' & 'gender identity' are not protected characteristics.

See current thread for how this has been corrected for charities (NCH), schools, LAs etc:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3404539-Major-childrens-charity-Stonewall-Mermaids-and-gender

Thanks all that is really helpful and the stories about other organisations changing their policies give me hope.

It should be really straightforward.

There are many charities, businesses and public services (including schools) which have incorrectly quoted the Equality Act.

Polite and factual correspondence highlighting the error should always result in the policy being corrected.

I would also point out that gender is not another word for sex. It's not obvious to many people. I certainly used to use the two interchangeably until a couple of years ago.

I had a similar thing with the Company’s Diversity and Inclusion policy, they used ‘gender’ not ‘sex’.

I wrote back to HR highlighting I noticed the ERROR and said that thought they would want to know about it as FEEDBACK (to help them comply with the law). That’s how I framed it. I sent the link

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents

Then couple of simple statements saying

The Protected Characteristics according to EA 2010 is ‘sex’ not ‘gender’. Gender reassignment is a separate Protected Characteristic.
This is fundamental as the intent is to protect against sex discrimination.

Thanks to the suggestions by MNs on another thread. I left it at that.

We should all do this for every company and school or organisation where we see this happening. The push back has to begin somewhere.

We should all do this for every company and school or organisation where we see this happening.

Yes absolutely.

Check the policies which relate to the schools, nurseries, clubs, businesses and services which are relevent to you.

Its a very simple process to identify incorrect wording of the legislation. In correcting it, the organisation's policy is protected.

The Protected Characteristics according to EA 2010 is ‘sex’ not ‘gender’. Gender reassignment is a separate Protected Characteristic.

So, the club should adhere to sex as a protected characteristic. But within the spirit of that (I'm not sure if 'gender reassignment' really applies to children?) they should protect against trans/GNC children being discriminated against/bullied within their own sex. This is where GG went so badly wrong - including transgirls while discriminating against transboys.