endofthelinefinally
"Is gender a protected characteristic?"
The protected characteristic is "gender reassignment".
Sex is also a protected characteristic.
"Gender reassignment" does not supersede sex as a protected characteristic, much as the trans lobby would lie this to be the case. The trans lobby wants to remove sex from UK law and replace it and "gender reassignment" with the undefined notion of "gender identity".
What transgender ideology propagates is the notion that biological sex does not exist, that all humans are defined in terms of gender; ie: femininity and masculinity. Thus, in terms of their ideology, a person born male who expresses himself in terms of what he perceives to be 'femininity' is a feminine person and is entitled to all the rights, spaces, treatments etc other 'feminine' people have; and vice versa. This means that the entirety of society becomes mixed sex in all circumstances. No-one has any right to any sex-segregated space or treatment anywhere.
Understandably, this is very worrying in terms of the safety, privacy and dignity of girls and women who are subjected constantly to abuse in very many forms by males.