Universities, minorities, toilets, research, help!

[Rubydoobydoobydoo]

Name change for this as an extra level of precaution. I have a young friend who works in student services at a university. She is GC and we met when we both attended a GC event.

The university has started on a plan to make the vast majority of toilets mixed-sex. The university has a particularly high proportion of female foreign students, many of them Muslim. The daughter has started to be approached, fearfully, by female students anxious to locate the nearest female-only facilities and upset that they have to go out of their way to find them. She has had to warn them that they may come across men even in the women-only facilities, because there's a small number of men who identify as trans and NB and sometimes use the women's loos even though there are mixed-sex ones now available.

One of my contact's colleagues is also GC and coming up to retirement and has decided to throw caution to the wind and raise the issue with management. Management have referred to HR. Both management and HR have offered vague, waffly and often factually incorrect responses in which they get the Equality Act wrong but also clearly place the needs of a handful of trans and NB individuals above those of hundreds of minority women. The colleague has recorded a couple of the formal conversations she's had with management and they are bizarre: management and HR are all over the place linguistically (using 'transsexual' instead of transgender) and apparently conflating camp gay men with transwomen.

The daughter and her colleague have contacted Sex Matters and another group that supports single-sex facilities but have heard nothing and assume that those groups are overwhelmed with similar requests.

We're trying to come up with a plan to make the university think more seriously about the subject. Our thoughts are that we need to do some research and produce evidence. We can get groups of women to stand outside the various campuses and conduct vox pops and informal surveys, but we assume those won't be taken seriously. We have some money. Could we commission some research? Do we commission the university to carry out its own research?

Trying to develop an evidence-based plan that they can't fob off. Any thoughts/ ideas?

Has the university consulted with the students on this?
Wondering if the staff would be happy to accept such a proposal for staff toilets.....
(Im pro gender freedom but not at expense of single sex spaces.)
Personally feel that we need legislation to back women on this, that only women can use them, with the exception of the fully transitioned.

Equality Impact Assessment should have been done. They may have used University of Sheffield "Around the toilet" project to justify their decision. The trans person consulting on that project was Jess Bradley who was suspended by NUS for posting inappropriate photos of themself online.
Ask to see EIA , as there might not even be one.

I would contact EHRC.

equalityhumanrights.com/en

And consider perhaps a lawyer's letter.

I'm not sure how to find a decent lawyer, but I'd probably call Ben Cooper.

Contact the government minister for Higher Education.

Thank you — some good suggestions to start.

They did ask if there had been an impact assessment and I think they were fobbed off. There was a lot of 'but other universities are doing this and we don't want to be left behind.'

Lots of thinking and planning. If anyone hears of anything similar at another university please let us know. If one or other of us can develop a strategy for tackling this we can share it.

I would contact the EHRC as a whistleblower if you can.

There's a few issues here, the Equality Act getting ignored, and the protected GC beliefs, and the infringement on religious beliefs.

A "fully transitioned" transwoman is a man. If you make exceptions, you exclude the minority women groups this thread is about.

The moment you allow a transwomen into women-only space it becomes mixed sex because humans can't change sex.

ONS are provisionally due to release the Sexual orientation and gender identity data. They have already released the Ethnic group, national identity, language and religion data. census.gov.uk/census-2021-results/phase-one-topic-summaries

I would use this data to set out populations e.g. number of females, number of Muslim females, number all people (male and female with a GRC c5,000), number of transwomen etc. If you can also get the same data from the university.

The next step is provision of toilets by sex, www.hse.gov.uk/contact/faqs/toilets.htm I know it says at work but extrapolate for student population. www.hse.gov.uk/simple-health-safety/workplace-facilities/health-safety.htm

Describe current toilets using male, female, unisex and disabled e.g how many in each building, what type are they e.g. enclosed floor to ceiling with toilet & hand basin or cubicles and urinals.

Point out single sex spaces are legal to protect privacy and dignity of individuals, for example toilets with urinals do not offer males privacy and dignity if females are permitted to use them.

Point out on the basis of religion and sex protected characteristics Muslim women, (Jewish women - I think) etc. need access to single sex female toilets.

Suggest given that x% of students and staff identify as female, y% identify as Muslim or faith that requires SS toilets but only z% identify as trans people that it would be pragmatic that in Building A one male and one female toilets are renamed unisex (not gender neutral) and the others are relabelled male and female. For % use Census 2021 figures and if you have them the university %.

Add in the data from the Times www.thetimes.co.uk/article/unisex-changing-rooms-put-women-in-danger-8lwbp8kgk about unisex facilities putting women at risk.

HTH