What I find particularly interesting on this story is to see how they Mail have reported on this compared to the Guardian.
The Guardian have come from the angle of saying its Badenoch in having driven this single handedly, and saying SHE will change the law whereas the Mail emphasises the role of the EHRC much more, and says that SUNAK (not Badenoch) will consider changing the law now on this basis in a much more collaborative way from government. However the Mail seems to edit out the role of Sex Matters on this.
The Mail also has a quote from the Labour Party which is seemingly positive (the LPs position is not commented on in the Guardian article):
Rishi Sunak is now expected to take action on the advice of the watchdog, with the Prime Minister having pledged to review the Act during last summer's Tory leadership race.
He previously described the 2010 legislation as 'a Trojan horse that has allowed every kind of woke nonsense to permeate public life'.
Labour today welcomed a review of the Equality Act, with a party spokesperson saying: 'Clarification is a good thing. We will look closely at what's brought forward.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11941881/EHRC-chair-backs-law-change-amid-widespread-confusion-trans-issues.html
Crucially in the Mail article we have this quote:
She added there was a 'current lack of a definition' over the term 'sex' in the Equality Act, which means the EHRC has 'taken the position that a trans woman with a GRC (Gender Recognition Certificate), for example, is in principle entitled to access women’s spaces such as a hospital ward, a woman’s changing room, and so on'.
Baroness Falkner acknowledged 'this is contested', writing: 'Some people think this cannot be the meaning of "woman" in the Equality Act. Having considered this in detail, we agree.
And
Earlier this week, in a 19-page letter to Ms Badenoch, Baroness Falkner identified eight areas where updating the Equality Act could bring benefits.
This includes in the employment of staff in safe spaces such as women's or girls' hostels, the use of women's-only wards in hospitals, and the exclusion of trans women from women's sports.
This seems to suggest much more explicitly that the loophole where someone has a GRC has to be treated as if their gender identity was their biological sex would be closed for certain situations where the 'sex' exemption is already written into the Equality Act but is being bulldozed by 'Stonewall Law' getting ahead of the actual law.
I do like that the Guardian article highlights the following though:
The EHRC said there was also a clear need to evolve the language used in the 2010 act, which “refers to trans people as ‘transsexuals’, and uses the terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ at times interchangeably, with the requirement on employers to report ‘gender pay gaps’ in fact a duty to report on pay differences according to the protected characteristic of sex”.
The clear need to separate and not conflate the words sex and gender is a really important one, which would do much to help record data accurately / separately and in itself protects women (and ironically trans people) to a large extent.
The Guardian fails to mention (the now discredited) Mermaids but does record a reaction from Stonewall, but the Mail has a quote from Mermaids.
BOTH articles are well worth reading as they clearly give different information - and I would argue neither is particularly biased in the way we've grown used to seeing from the Mail/Guardian. Both are fairly good on the journalistic content being prominant rather than the editorial line being heavily pushed.