New EHRC guidelines - women only jobs

[RedToothBrush]

Fairplay for women
BREAKING: New EHRC guidance relating to ‘women-only’ job adverts.

“A ‘sex-based’ occupational requirement to be a woman under Schedule 9 cannot include transgender women who have not obtained a GRC” /1
https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/guidance/guidance-discriminatory-adverts

We have been calling for this guidance for a long time. We have been reporting rogue employers each time they misuse the law by advertising for ‘self-identifying women’ to fill women-only roles. /2

In March this year EHRC promised to publish new guidance. From now on no employer can say it didn’t understand the rules. /3

This new guidance that makes clear men who self-identity as women are not female and should not be recruited as such. This makes it fairer on the women who apply and the people who rely on a woman being in that role for reasons of privacy, dignity and safety. /4

However this new guidance also says men who change their legal status to female by obtaining a GRC can be recruited into a female role. This highlights the absurdity of a law that expects a woman to waive her need for privacy or safety simple because a man gets a certificate. /5

The new Labour Government wants to make it even easier for men to get these certificates. /6

This is why Starmer must take seriously calls to clarify that sex means biological sex in the Equality Act.

Otherwise when you next ask for a women to perform your intimate exam you might get a man with a certificate doing it. /7

This new guidance is a step in the right direction. It bars the majority of men who identity as women from getting jobs reserved for women. Most transgender males do not have a GRC. But it leaves open a loophole for a small number to access these jobs with a GRC. More progress is needed before this is truly fair on women. /8

https://fairplayforwomen.com/new-guidance-for-employers-on-women-only-jobs/

I’m pleasantly surprised so far at the pace of announcements. It feels like the new government have stepped into a big room strewn with all sorts of rubbish, and are making a start tidying up. Tackling the small and easy to pick up bits first while weighing up the massive booby-trapped boulders in the middle of the floor.

They have been clear in the past that, if the application includes all the correct paperwork and documentation to comply with the requirements, it will be automatically handed out. There’s no assessment of the person or their history, including any history of criminal offending against women or children.

A few people have asked if you can ask to see a GRC. You don’t need to, you can ask all applicants to show a birth certificate though. Without a GRC it will show the correct sex.

I have always thought that, though I don’t want self-ID, it will be much easier to undermine than the current law. Of course dodgy men will apply, and especially criminals so that they will automatically be processed as female if imprisoned, but uppity women can also apply. If single sex spaces cannot legally exclude someone with a GRC, then all the new Mumsnet Men can cause no end of trouble. Lawbreaking to demonstrate the stupidity of laws has been used to good effect before.

Is it that they don’t want to bother or that they don’t understand the law or that they don’t want to implement the law if it’ll see them targeted by trans activists?

@PriOn1 An assessment IS carried out - that is why between 2% and 10% of applications are rejected every year.

Its why Fred Wallace does not have one - he was refused
as were several other high profile TRAs

It is clear as the EA is written, because like it or not the GRA impacted on the protected characteristic of sex.

No other protectec charateristic has to take into account an aquire identity of that characteristic.

So long as the GRA exists and there are GRC to make both "valid" the protected characteristic of sex had to now encompass a "legal" version of sex. Unlike say Race. Nobody can gain a certificate saying that for "all purposes" they should be taken to be part of a race they weren't born into.

And in fact this new guidance would make it really hard for a court to say this guidance is wrong.

And if it is wrong, then a ruling saying that would be saying a GRC has no value or purpose.

Yes @IwantToRetire that's the point here. The EA does imply in places that having a GRC is a higher bar to clear. But TRAs have been influencing government departments for years that it didn't make any difference because any male who fancied it could use women's spaces just by "identifying" as a woman.

IMHO issuing GRCs causes more harm to all females, for a minuscule benefit of a tiny number of men....I don't see how any gov't can continue with this farce.

What justification is there?

There's a problem and another conflict here.

It's WORIADS to not believe in gender. And other rulings are starting to recognise the vulnerable nature of women in certain situations.

So this ISN'T the same as a situation of being treated by a black doctor.

This opens up a can of worms that I don't think is fully being addressed even now.

The main justification is obsolete now, that male people "identifying" as women couldn't marry other male people.

I agree.

But you still have nonsense like the MTF who took the hospital to tribunal and the judge ruled it was harassment to ask whether this individual would be undressing in a changing room apparently because the female manager wouldn't have asked an actual woman.

I think the new guidance is confusing can someone help me understand pls.

Is it saying that if you make use of the occupational requirement you can allow men with a GRC to take the role if you want but you are also entitled to exclude them. But you can't include TW without a GRC even if you want to because they are not legally female?

"Occupational requirements under Schedule 9 must relate to having a particular protected characteristic as defined in the Equality Act 2010. The protected characteristic of ‘sex’ means a person’s legal sex as recorded on their birth certificate or their Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC). This means that a sex-based occupational requirement that an applicant is a woman – as is common within specialist support services for women, such as rape counselling – will include women who are recorded female at birth and also transgender women who have obtained a GRC."

"However, Schedule 9 also permits an occupational requirement to exclude transgender persons where it is objectively justified, and this can include those who have obtained a GRC. A ‘sex-based’ occupational requirement to be a woman under Schedule 9 cannot include transgender women who have not obtained a GRC, as they do not have legal status as women under the Equality Act 2010."

Yes that's how I read it.

This has been said before but the EHRC has never confirmed it in its guidelines so explicitly.

No GRC : birth sex no matter what the identity
GRC : birth sex in some situations

so again, the number of people who MUST be using self ID who are now on the wrong side of the EHRC
is substantial

On the subject of Labour making it easier to get a GRC:

I did an interesting YouGov survey last week. There was a section about attitudes to Labour’s possible new policies. One had various statements to which there were four possible reply options (excuse not typing them all in full, but I hope you get the idea) plus “don’t know’.

The options: I would be (happy)/(unhappy)if they did this (and would)/(but would not) think Labour were breaking its promises if they did it

The statements:
-Increasing VAT to fund public services

-Bringing the UK back into the single market

-Making it easier for people to transition from being a man to a woman

-Increasing council tax to fund public services

-Increasing capital gains to fund public services

-Introducing amnesty for illegal immigrants

-Continuing to allow MPs to have second jobs

-Increasing national insurance to fund public services.

What do you notice?

Is it saying that if you make use of the occupational requirement you can allow men with a GRC to take the role if you want but you are also entitled to exclude them. But you can't include TW without a GRC even if you want to because they are not legally female?

Exactly - the GRA created these "legal women" but Stonewall created the "I believe I am so you must" woman.

So the guidelines aren't new, but just a push back against the inroads Stonewall and others have made, and some employers chose to go along with it.

But whether you go with the actual guidance or the Stonewall version, it is the GRA that means that sex is the only protected characteristic that has to pretend that someone who doesn't have that characteristic does have it.

ie the GRA isn't about equal rights, it is in fact social engineering.

It is Government telling society you have to not just respect someone else's belief, but have to accept and act as it were fact.

Akua Reindorf here saying they can be excluded even with a GRC

https://x.com/seeninhr/status/1813246024221065623?s=61&t=n0HKoTYUTribHJPPdVXsVQ

As a prominent TRA mentioned on X, as soon as you get your biological sex changed on your birth certificate following your GRC issuance, then you tear up the GRC as you have no further use for it. You can go round and if anyone questions you, you are a masculine looking woman, and you have your birth certificate to prove it.

Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre being the most prominent.

As the guidance says:

Schedule 9 also permits an occupational requirement to exclude transgender persons where it is objectively justified, and this can include those who have obtained a GRC.

This is not just about TW saying they should be included, but the real issue is not enough employers, service providers can be bothered to use the SSE to create genuinely women only services, provision.

But if a job has been properly advertised using the SSE and a TW goes ahead and applies then they are acting illegally

But of course when an employer, as in ERCC, is part of illegally advertising a role, and the charity commission fails to admonish them, then it seems (and maybe not just in Scotland) that you can breach the law.

It is extraordinary that no part of the Scottish establishment has in any way made any attempt to ensure ERCC acts legally.

Just confirms that when it is about women's rights, not even the bodies existing to ensure those rights, think they are important enough to do anything about those who breach those rights.

So I still don’t understand how the SSE are workable in real life situations. If you offer a service and you decide it is proportionate to make use of the occupational requirement and decide you are going to exclude males with a GRC how can you know that someone with F all over their identity documents is male in situations where they pass relatively well as female? Do you just have to hope for the best that men with a GRC will respect the basis on which the job is offered? They really shouldn’t be allowed to change the sex marker on their BC.

But if a job has been properly advertised using the SSE and a TW goes ahead and applies then they are acting illegally

It should be criminal.

but the real issue is not enough employers, service providers can be bothered to use the SSE to create genuinely women only services, provision

Who can blame them if they are worried they will have to objectively justify it.