The Women and Equalities Office has been replaced by the Government Equalities Office (with a focus on gender and LGBT rights, women not mentioned)

[AnotherAdultHumanFemale]

I've just seen this on Spinster. The government's Women and Equalities office no longer exists, and instead they have created The Government Equalities Office. In their twitter bio it states 'We are the UK Government Equalities Office, responsible for gender and LGBT equality.' They have also got a rainbow coloured logo.

This is really stressful. What have LGBT rights got to do with women's sex based oppression, the reason for the office in the first place? At the moment those two things are in direct opposition to each other. Who is going to protect women's rights now, if the office set up to do that has been dismantled?

twitter.com/GEOgovuk

It says this on their website:

"The Government Equalities Office leads work on policy relating to women, sexual orientation and transgender equality. We are responsible for a range of equalities legislation."

Thanks AnotherAdultHumanFemale

Re policy relating to women I’ll go read properly in a bit but do they define woman / women?

I've not read into it yet, just saw it tonight. I'm assuming this is the start, and they'll change 'women' to 'gender' on documents going forward since they have erased us from the title of the office and said they are now focused on 'gender' and LGBT rights rather than women's rights.

The name has changed now, but their policies haven’t. The writing on the wall has been clear for a while. They’ve changed the name to reflect something that has already happened. Under the radar, as usual.

This is worrying 😕

I think its fair enough. If it is led by people who don’t know what a woman is, there is no point having women in the department’s title.

One day it will all sort out and reality will return. Sadly, I think things have got to get a lot worse before they can get better.

It was always the GEO. There is a women and equalities minister (Amber Rudd) and a women and equalities committee.

I was just coming on to post what Dancingbea has said.

There was never a women and equalities office. It was always GEO. I don't get this.

Wasn’t it always the GEO?

There are some serious issues with the neutrality of the civil servants working there which is going to implode horribly at some point. Key civil servants there are basically TRAs and have been running the show in a way they really shouldn’t be.

So have they dropped disability, religion, race etc from equality legislation now?

It's always been the GEO but I can't remember what the strap line was on the twitter account. I thought it said Women and Equalities not Gender and LBGT but I could be wrong.

Has it been updated when adding dinky little rainbow icons. Was this for
Pride. Will we get Suffragette colours at some point. They really have been infiltrated.

The Minister for Women and Equalities has overall responsibility for:

• policy on women

• policy on sexual orientation and transgender equality cross-government equality strategy and legislation

Before July 2014, this role was covered by the Minister for Women and the Minister for Equalities.

Why women should be lumped in with sexual orientation and trans issues makes no sense to me. In fact, the two are mutually exclusive. Women's sex-based oppression, violence against women and girls, and women's suffrage, affects over 50% of the population: women.

The GEO was the successor to the Women and Equality Unit.

There are some serious issues with the neutrality of the civil servants working there which is going to implode horribly at some point. Key civil servants there are basically TRAs and have been running the show in a way they really shouldn’t be.
It certainly looks that way. The GEO's definition of woman doesn't appear to be based on sex.
The ministerial portfolio needs to be split again so there's a dedicated Minister for Women who doesn't have to focus every decision on serving the needs of a specific group of men.

Why doesn't the GEO focus on all strands of the equality act 2010. Why only gender (which should be sex) and LGBT?

There's still a minister for women (Atkins) as well as a minister for equalities (Williams) and a minister for women and equalities (Rudd).

I don't think anything at all has changed.

I'm not sure they ever did anything on other protected characteristics. For instance, disability sat within DWP but I think has just moved to cabinet office.

I don't get what people think has changed (other than crappy, woke civil servants endlessly prioritising trans issues and conflating sex and gender).

Why doesn't the GEO focus on all strands of the equality act 2010. Why only gender (which should be sex) and LGBT?

It leads policy work on women and LGBT, and coordinates with other government departments on other equalities.

It really needs to decide what it means by 'gender'. Sometimes it's sex, but mostly the GEO seems to understand it as 'gender identity'.
'Trans' apparently includes cross-dressers/transvestites (yes, the GEO uses that word). 'Women' includes 'transgender women' with or without a GRC, and the L in the LGBT includes males who identify as lesbians.
It's a mess. The Women & Equalities Committee recently recommended that the GEO "issue a clear statement of the law on single-sex services to all Departments". How are they going to do that, when their own interpretation of it is so incoherent?

Thanks for the clarification. Feels misleading that the government EQUALITIES office is only focused on equality for certain groups.

I'm amazed at the removal of the word women and the very deliberate addition of "gender" at a time when they (especially the Women & Equalities Select Committee) are now very aware of the problems that conflating sex and gender has caused women.

It seems like a deliberate slap in the face, or a very marked display of power.

It’s so clear who women are dominated by and who now gets to define us.

In fairness nearly all of the recent tweets on the geo account linked to in the OP are about, and explicitly mention, women.

The ministerial portfolio needs to be split again so there's a dedicated Minister for Women who doesn't have to focus every decision on serving the needs of a specific group of men.

Yes this.

They do mention women dancing but unless they clarify that this does not include any man who fancies saying he’s a woman for whatever reason it’s a bit diluted.

There is a dedicated Minister for Women.