Protected characteristics

[12boo]

Is it true that sex is a legally protected characteristic? That in law being female is one of the criteria that we are not supposed to be discriminatory against on the basis of? And if so why isn't sex considered protected in hate speech? Is there a campaign (I want one) to insist that it's illegal to be abusive on the grounds of sex?
Help

I would add that the Equalities and Human Rights commission are the UK regulator responsible for enforcing the Equality Act 2010. So far their contribution appears to have been about as effective as a chocolate teapot with respect to the protect characteristic of ‘sex’ but their blurb says their regulatory role ‘Is to help organisations achieve what they should, not catch them out when they fall short’ and that their powers include to provide ‘Advice and guidance, publishing Information and undertaking research’.

Anyway I suggest that every time we see organisations like the NHS or whoever cheerily erasing women, that we copy in the Equality and human rights commission to remind them that they don’t seem to have effective strategies currently in respect of women‘s rights.

Professor great that you are writing to people to raise the profile of these issues.

www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/about-us/what-we-do

‘The Equality and Human Rights Commission is:

1. A catalyst for change

Enabling and encouraging improvement by bringing people together to devise solutions, and building capacity in other organisations to help them to effect change. Where appropriate, we conduct inquiries to explore systemic issues, gather evidence and develop possible solutions.

1. An information provider

Helping people understand their rights and responsibilities and improve compliance with the law.

1. An influencer

Using our legal expertise, research, insight and analysis to influence public policy and inform debates.

1. An evaluator

Monitoring the effectiveness of the laws protecting people’s rights to equality and human rights, and measuring progress in society.

1. An enforcer

Using our strategic enforcement powers selectively to protect people against serious and systemic abuses of their rights and to clarify equality and human rights law, alongside our efforts help organisations to comply with equality and human rights standards.’

Is it true that sex is a legally protected characteristic? That in law being female is one of the criteria that we are not supposed to be discriminatory against on the basis of?

Yes.

And if so why isn't sex considered protected in hate speech?

Because it is so "normal" the police would deal with nothing else.

The hard dark dangerous knowledge women have to deal with (when they realise that feminism is right!) is that we are not considered fully human - even by other women. We live in a patriarchy, men demonstrate explicit hatred of women all the time. Sadly & what is difficult for many (most? all?) women is we have to come to terms with our own conditioned & internalised misogyny. We all have difficult work to do, to recognise this in ourselves, forgive ourselves, and try to live/think differently. in my youth we went to Consciousness Raising groups

I keep hoping it gets easier with each generation. I'm 60. I hope that 40 year olds are mentally freer than I am about this conditioning, and that 20 year olds even more so.

But I fear this is not the case at the moment.

But it's a tough recognition - to recognise "just how much men hate us" (to paraphrase Germaine Greer). It's painful.

In the compulsory online training material provided by my university on this very area, I had to point out that it was sex not gender, and that transgender was not a sexual orientation, and that as a lesbian, I felt particularly offended by their inability to get the law correct as regards both the areas of sex and sexual orientation.

You might have expected that employees at a university would have managed to get their heads round the importance of getting their facts straight, but then I am hopelessly naive.............

I approached them about the 'sex' and 'gender' and they did change it

I'm on my workplace's EDI group, and had to ask HR to remove 'gender' and replace it with 'sex' from our Terms of Reference. If HR people invested in EDI can't even use the legally correct terms ...

Well @SomeDyke you might think that, but I couldn't possibly comment - as they say (my experience was at a university also).

If gender is a synonym for sex, (the noun, rather than the verb) then it needs to mean the same thing so there is consistency. The ridiculous notion that humans have gendered souls inside their bodies that may or may not correspond to their gender identity needs dispelling. The ideology is simply a nonsense and claiming to be a woman if one is a man, or vice versa (genuine dysphoria notwithstanding) should be treated as the misappropriation that it is. Then both sex and gender are protected

@ChattyLion

I would add that the Equalities and Human Rights commission are the UK regulator responsible for enforcing the Equality Act 2010. So far their contribution appears to have been about as effective as a chocolate teapot with respect to the protect characteristic of ‘sex’ but their blurb says their regulatory role ‘Is to help organisations achieve what they should, not catch them out when they fall short’ and that their powers include to provide ‘Advice and guidance, publishing Information and undertaking research’.

Anyway I suggest that every time we see organisations like the NHS or whoever cheerily erasing women, that we copy in the Equality and human rights commission to remind them that they don’t seem to have effective strategies currently in respect of women‘s rights.

That's really interesting and a good point. I will make a Note to address that. Thank you

@EmmaGrundyForPM

I work for an LA and our website has our E& D. policy on it. The 9 protected characteristics are listed except that instead of sex it says gender. I've raised the issue but the person I was directed to about it signs off her email with her name and then "chosen pronouns: she/her" so I'm not holding my breath!

Update- someone has updated the policy! They have taken out 'gender' and replaced it with 'sex'.!

I haven't had a response to.my email but clearly they have taken action, which is great.

I had quite a bit of success by trawling NHS Trust websites and emailing where they.made this error (I didn't get out much even before lockdown ).. Fair Play for Women has great standard wording on their site for complaints. Only catch was that one or two stuck by a big NHS guidance document (name escapes me) that had changed sex to gender and this argued they weren't in breach. I have the feeling that most will change it and have been 'Stonewalled' into misrepresenting the law. Same job needs doing with LAs. And yes great idea on aligning with hate speech.

Wasn’t it the EHRC who recently advertised a senior job role and replaced “sex” with “ “gender” and “gender reassignment” with “gender identity” in their own advert? There was a big hoo ha on Twitter about it and the job advert mysteriously disappeared.

I believe the head of EHRC previously worked at Stonewall, so total institutional capture there.

Here’s someone pulling them up on it twitter.com/zeno001/status/1277544515210002434?s=21

so if 'transwomen are women' then they get less protection against discrimination and hate speech than they would as transwomen?

Why can't I identify as a transwoman?

EHRC need to be held to account every time they don’t treat the protected characteristic of sex appropriately, that Twitter example is a brilliant example of that happening. We could show our expectations by copying EHRC in with examples, where other third party organisations are not applying the Equality Act correctly, like all those local Authorities whose policies replaced sex with gender.
This will add pressure and build EHRC‘s awareness of this as a serious issue not amenable to political fudge or regulatory obfuscation or pointing everyone to look the other way.

The parent government department of EHRC is the Government Equality Office. GEO gives EHRC their budget. The three GEO ministers are headed by Liz Truss MP and listed here: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Equalities_Office
We could copy them in too while we are at it.

Institutional capture has to be reversed somehow, for everyone’s sake. Taxpayers money funds EHRC. All of us need an organisation whose job it is to uphold equality for everyone, and it needs to be an organisation who will do so effectively within the law.

The Chair job ad fiasco shows that EHRC appear to need to understand their own remit better (!) and hopefully the next Chair would lead that change. Gender critical people with the right skills should apply to join- they have the Chair vacancy and 5 commissioner/board member places up all at the same time which is quite unusual (that’s about half of the current ECHR Commissioners). An unprecedented opportunity to change organisational culture and focus EHRC on its remit of providing clear advice on upholding the Equality Act, including being clear on its existing stated exemptions.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3953038-David-Isaac-leaves-EHRC-in-Aug?msgid=97894660#97894660

Chair job spec
publicappointments.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/appointment/chair-equality-and-human-rights-commission/

They also need 4 Commissioners with skills in Audit and Risk, Business / Commercial, Change Management, Communication / Media / Marketing, IT / Digital, Legal / Judicial, Major Projects, Regulation, Transformation.

Job spec here: publicappointments.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/appointment/non-executive-commissioner-equality-and-human-rights-commission/

And one commissioner post in Wales
publicappointments.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/appointment/wales-commissioner-equality-and-human-rights-commission/

I recently wrote to my LA to correct them on the misuse of the EA wording, listing gender instead of sex.

I first wrote to them three years ago to correct this. Aside from the legalities, I pointed out that it was offensive to me as a woman.

They have apologised and agreed to correct it, but we will see.

At work, HR's policies say gender instead of sex, which I know I need to tackle next.

It's so disheartening when even the EHRC is currently advertising for a CEO? (I think) and can't even correctly list the protected characteristics, seemingly forgetting 'sex'.

Even an LA can't just rewrite an Act of Parliament to suit themselves. The Equality Act is dated 2010. No, it hasn't been changed (the date is a giveaway). No, it hasn't been updated. They are misquoting the law to follow an agenda and therefore may be at risk of being in breach of the law.

Are their lawyers and insurers aware they may knowingly be in breach?

CQC is another body which cant get the protected characteristics right
"People using services must not be discriminated against in any way and the provider must take account of protected characteristics, set out in the Equality Act 2010.
The protected characteristics are age, disability, gender, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity status, race, religion or belief and sexual orientation"

they actually get themselves in a complete muddle saying people are entitled to a carer of the same gender but then talk about people being entitled to only share bathrooms with people of the same sex

I have a woke workplace but got it moved back to sex in our policy by just saying in an email that I’d seen that there was an inaccuracy in how they had represented the law. Gave them link to the Equality Act. They changed it straight back. Employers can’t quote the law wrongly. It wasn’t a big deal at all, management and HR are not stupid and they don’t want their organisation to be vulnerable. Misquoting the applicable law puts organisations at risk. Doesn’t matter what some organisations would prefer the law to be. Once that is clarified, the interesting work starts on thinking about the organisational culture that allowed that change to be made.

Some previous threads on asking LAs to make corrections to accurately represent the law, in lots of cases they did which was great as this is so important.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3271841-does-your-local-authority-equality-policy-exclude-sex-as-a-protected-characteristic

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3272580-Spreadsheet-of-local-authorities-that-record-sex-not-gender-lets-complete-it-together

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3549261-New-council-website-we-use-gender-identity-rather-than-gender-reassignment?pg=2

DD's school recently sent out a document for parents about the new PSHE curriculum. They listed nine protected characteristics in their equality statement; one was sex, one was gender reassignment, one was gender. Marriage and civil partnership were mysteriously absent.

Currently waiting on a callback about it. This should be interesting...

Good luck Tyro.

Councils, schools, businesses etc are writing any old crap and expecting people to accept it.

Or not notice.

They've changed it, and thanked me for pointing it out, so that was a good result!