How does FWS impact the widening access programmes targeting “women and those who identify as women”?

[EveryonesTalkingRubbish]

DD studies STEM and there are lots of work experience/internships that target underrepresented groups eg Black Heritage, Women. The ones for women usually say “women and those who identify as women”.
After FWS win will this still be legal? Will men be able to claim they are discriminatory as some men (who identify as women) can apply?

This started already with open days and masterclasses which were only open to “women and those who identify as women”.

I find it annoying in subjects where the sex mix is 80/20 in favour of men, some men can identify into these programmes.

Thank you!

Wow. So they’ve found a workaround to continue disadvantaging women. Unbelievable!

My understanding is that the FWS case was brought on the basis of women’s positions on public boards being filled by men. So presumably, there’s some leeway to argue that by including someone born male on a programme designed to target disadvantages/lack of representation by women and girls, they’re not fulfilling their objective?

I think a man who is excluded from an internship which allows other men to apply would have a good case for sex discrimination

Excellent point! If they’re all male, then they should all be afforded the same opportunities. It’s like saying people who believe in God can apply but atheists can’t.

This.

it's my understanding that it's either for women, in which case it has to be for women. Or it's mixed sex. And they have to say so.

But they can't pretend it's for women, because they're trying to be woke, and then it not be

@EveryonesTalkingRubbish

They are unlawful criteria. Initiatives like this can only be lawful if they fall under the category of Positive Action - helping a group of people with a (ie one) shared PC in an area where they are underrepresented and disadvantaged. Males who identify as women are men and do not share a PC with women, however they identify or don't. Women of all races, all faiths or none, all ages, disabled or able-bodied, gay or straight, share the PC of (female) Sex.
Opening up to males who identify as women invalidates the Positive Action exception and is discriminatory against males who don't identify as women.

Edited for clarity

The starting position under the Equality Act is that you cannot discriminate on the basis of sex.
If you want to apply single sex exemptions there needs to be a legitimate aim - such as encouraging women into STEM subjects
If you use the SSEs then they can only be applied to a single sex.

I would hope that the ruling means that SSEs must apply to women and not to those who aren’t women but identify as them (or worse, anyone who is a “non-man”).

But I don’t think it will necessarily protect women only courses designed to widen access. These don’t need to be simply limited to a sex class, they could define eligibility to widen access to several protected characteristics they can show are under represented including people with gender reassignment. So instead of saying women and those who identify as women they could say women and anyone who has a trans identity. (Assuming such people are under represented - which isn’t necessarily a given for some male dominated academic subjects like computer science).

One - a single - shared PC. You could have a course for each PC (if you could justify it) but not a mixture of PCs in each course.

My understanding is that the SSEs applied regardless of today's decision. Today was not about the SSEs, it was about the meaning of woman, man and sex. The SSEs already explicitly make lawful discrimination on the grounds of GR and/or Sex in certain situations where women's rights to privacy, dignity and safety are engaged - eg, RCCs and communal toilets.
This ruling is about things like women-only book groups, lesbian bars, etc. A single sex service has to exclude all people of the opposite sex in order to be single sex, and the GRC does not change the sex of a person for the purposes of the EA2010.

Succinctly put.The first programme that springs to mind is the Jo Cox leadership programme, which is for women, and includes trans women. From now on it can legally only be for biological women, or for women and men. But NOT women and trans women.

The main point is that a programme targetted like this is not targetted to help women, thus does not satisfy any requirement or demand to do so, nor fall under any legal provision that would permit it.

Helping "X or Y" in aggregate is not the same thing as helping X and helping Y.

Even after Starmer said women were adult human females they did not change that one

Interesting point - both the Athena swan programme and Aurora programme were set up to support women (Athena was women in science, Aurora was women in leadership). Both are full on TWAW and allow anyone who identifies as a woman to attend

I'd like both of those to have to become for actual women only

I agree the ruling does that when the issue is about providing a women only service because women's needs are different in some way (e.e their voice won't be heard if men are in the room).

But if the reason for providing a women only course is as a Positive Action because they are under represented, I don't know that it applies in the same way. My understanding is that it would be legal to have a course for, say, women and people of colour, if both women as a group and people of colour as a group are underrepresented in whatever the course was about. So I don't see how the law would stop someone from providing a course for both women and people with gender reassignment if both those groups were under represented.

Bizarrely, the people being discriminated against in these cases are men. Obviously it's women who are being denied opportunities. It's women whose opportunities are being handed over to men. It's women who are actually being discriminated against. But, as I understand it, the EA2010 does not oblige organisations to ensure women have equal access to these opportunities. Rather, it gives organisations express permission to discriminate against men by withholding some opportunities from them in order that they may be offered to women, with the ultimate object of giving women and men equal access.

Presumably atheists would not get a place on an ordination programme - I suspect belief in God is mandatory there and perfectly legal.

I actually know several priests who do not believe in god and one who openly admitted so when training!

Hmm. I know the sort of thing you mean, but I'm also sure that the positive action exception only applies when the group you are trying to help shares one PC. Sharing "a particular characteristic" is how it is described in government guides. Maybe what you are thinking of is adverts saying "applications from women, BME or gay & lesbian people especially welcome"? I think the employer/organiser would have to have a separate positive action scheme and justification for each group if you were an employer or running some sort of activity.

Also, (separate point) the disadvantage has to be able to be linked to the characteristic and I think it would be difficult to show that MCW were disadvantaged and underrepresented in areas in which women are also disadvantaged and underrepresented.
Not to mention the difficulty of showing underrepresentation of a tiny cohort anyway. According to official census statistics, which we have to take with a massive pinch of salt and are probably an overestimate, around 0.5% of the population claimed a trans identity, and the absolute number for MCW was under 50,000. This is less than 0.02% of the working population (assuming census only asked about adults' GI).

Just my musings, IANAL.

Yes, I was going to say that. You can continue to fuck women over just changing the wording - women and transgender people. There you are, perfectly legal...except perhaps for how do you prove your transgender status if you're not allowed to be asked for a GRC?

Surely “women only” programmes are only allowed because of the single sex exemptions - otherwise they would be illegally discriminating against men.

Therefore they must be single sex, therefore not open to men, however they identify.

You can restrict the group to women only OR transgender only. Not women and transgender only.

Also a GRC is not needed to have the protected characteristic of GR.

I also, ANAL! I hope you’re right.

I don't see how he/she got through the training tbh. The ordinands I know have had to go through interviews and also residential assessment before put on the pathway to becoming a priest. There is the possibility that what you take as atheism is Deism, the belief that there is no personal God but that the universe was an act of creation - most Christians practice Theism (that God is personal and intervenes in history).