EHRC confirms 'women only' jobs are allowed

[DomesticatedZombie]

In fact, I think what this means is that if the job is advertised under Section 9 exemption of the EA, it HAS to be given to a female. Anyone confirm that?

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/18ef87d4-cbbe-11ec-b4b6-e30a321b8cd3?shareToken=35d3b09373fa90f95fc795f3cd8a15c2

But that female could be a biological male with a GRC? Slightly confused.

Feminist campaigners have claimed that rape crisis centres have ignored schedule nine of the Equality Act by accepting applications from trans women who do not hold gender recognition certificates.

Schedule 9 covers ocupational requirements, and it covers all the protected characteristics, not just sex.
If a job is advertised under schedule 9 then AFAIK it must be given to a person who has the protected characteristic (otherwise why would you invoke it in the first place?); and no one should apply for the post if they do not share that protected characteristic.

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/schedule/9

A GRC does not change a persons legal gender for all purposes, that is clear in both the Equality Act and the Gender Recognition Act. I don't think a trans person with a GRC would have legal grounds for applying for a position which was dependant on a persons sex.
We could really do with some legal clarity on this without women's organisations being used by activists with an agenda to create test cases.

The big question would be whether having a GRC gives the applicant the protected characteristic of the opposite sex, or not. This really ought to be clearly set out in this section or in the definitions, but in the absence of that, although IANAL I think it is clear from the other sections relating to single-sex services etc. (where it is specified that someone with a GRC can still be excluded from services/facilities meant for the opposite sex, as long as the conditions are met) that "sex" in this Act refers to biological sex, rather than legal sex where changed with a GRC. But my opinion has always been that the GRA is atrociously badly written and thought-out, and the parts of the EqA relating to sex and to GRCs are also not great in places and often quite vague, so it's all an unholy mess when you put the two together, and no doubt some people would argue for a different interpretation...

I have the same question as you DZ

MW applied to & was give the job that specified female.
MW is a biological male & has no GRC

what about all the other well qualified males without GRCs - surely they were discriminated against by the fact the job advert made sure they assumed they couldn't apply

the whole thing makes me furious

That's not so as it's discriminating against another protected characteristic of gender reassignment.

Safety, privacy and dignity need to be assessed on a 1:1 basis and it has not been determined by the courts as of yet that these are proportional means. It will depend on circumstances not just ones dislike for trans people.

A long road yet!

Saying a male who identifies as a woman is not biologically female does not imply any dislike of that person and excluding them from a job not open to a person from their sex group is not discrimination according to the EQA.

Realistically services using this exemption are going to be for women who've suffered extreme abuse from males. The kind of abuse that requires the abuser to have a dick & be physically stronger.

The women needing the services are traumatised.

Trauma responses happen outside of the awareness of our prefrontal cortex. They are memories held within our bodies.

Your suggestion that women using rape crisis services might not want to be around male bodied people because they don't like them is spectacularly lacking in empathy.

I may be misremembering, but I am sure some judgement clarified that the exemptions in the Equality Act are not to be considered singly. So, for example, a rape crisis centre would not have to judge each time a transwoman applied, but that all rape crisis centres could be single sex. I just cannot remember who said it and where it was from.

Women wanting only other females on their hospital ward won't necessarily have suffered 'extreme violence' at the hands of males, FunnyTalks. We might just not want to have males near us while we're in night clothes, asleep, unable to move, deal with comments and smarm. And all the rest of the crappy stunts some men will pull.

I remember that too - that this was the actual meaning of case-by-case.

Once again for the people at the back, women's need for single sex spaces has nothing to do with liking or not liking trans people.

It's about having a space without men.

Agree that we need a clear definition of case by case. I have read that it means each (type of) institution or each individual. The latter makes no real sense in practical terms: imagine a junior nurse or a ward clerk looking at a bunch of tw and deciding who 'passes' and who doesn't. Ridiculous. Sensibly, any institution should be saying e.g. 'we deal with women raped by men. We therefore exclude all males from our services'. Which is not saying men don't need services but they need their own. And they could be included in outreach etc. Just not included sex-sensitive services.

We're just asking for the law as set out in the EA to be respected.

It still needs clarification, though, doesn't it?

Any service that segregates by sex and has an exemption applied should ... be segregated by sex (ie, female-only jobs/services/spaces should be only for females, as that is the whole and entire fucking point of them).

I would go so far as to say if the exemption has been applied/invoked and the service/space/job is NOT female only then they are knowingly putting females at risk by labelling a service/space/job single sex when it is in fact mixed sex.

It's not only sex that this applies to. Organisations that help ethnic minority women are able to restrict based on sex and race because of the particular needs of different ethnic groups, and factors such as trauma, and preferred language(s) spoken.

Or do the monitors think that white males should be able to self-ID into those jobs, too?

I agree that women’s centres shouldn’t include trans people.

But what if a rape victim was a man? Could he go to a rape crisis centre as a victim?

There ARE services for men. Some provided by rape crisis.

Men are very free to raise funds and set up more services. No one is stopping them.

Ah ok thank you

Thinking about it, the notion of accepting transwomen with a grc and not accepting transwomen who don't have them is an indefensible position that should never have come about.

It does imply that there is some form of choice to be OK with it or not.

As a woman living with the trauma of male violence I can assure anyone that is not the case. How could a piece of paper make any difference to my body's perception of another human body?

The grc never even meant the holder had surgery to remove genitals although, again, even that would not mitigate against a trauma response because it all happens before your thinking brain can grapple with any information.

the only transwoman I know of working in a position that was advertised as exempt/female only does not have a GRC, so is legally male.