What practical difference do you think the SC ruling will make?

[GCornotGCthatisthequestion]

What do you think will change following the SC ruling on the definition of woman in the equality act?

I think the SC ruling will strengthen the legal position for women who get screwed over in their workplace for standing up for themselves. Plenty of tribunals and court cases still to come, I expect.

So the Women's Institute will either have to exclude men or change its name?

Or just be very clear that they include men in their definition of women so that people can make an informed decision

I want to see enforcement. And first off I want to see big payouts for all the nurses who’ve been bullied to Tribunals. BIIIG payouts. Because only legal liability for screwing women over stops them screwing women over.

They already have a clear statement on their website that they include transgender women so this is essentially no change from current state.

They’ll have to change something. This, from their FAQs is clear that membership is only available to women. If they allow transwomen but not other males they’re being discriminatory.

Except that they can now no longer exclude any men.

It does mean they must be excluded unless ALL men are included.
Otherwise a boy who wants to go to a girls' school but doesn't identify as trans is being discriminated against, because another boy can go to the school.

Exactly - just get your Nigel to apply and he can sue if not included.

The Boys Brigade has been mixed sex for a while without changing its name. So this is possible but they admit all girls and all boys.

Yes and if you look at their website they use the terms children and young people not boys

whereas the WI only uses the term woman

I think this is the starting point for change. Where SSS are mandated, there is more weight to have them enforced if necessary. The EHRC would be the ones to do that I would imagine. This creates circumstances that make the denial of the need for SSSs harder where it’s not mandated. Why would any org argue that they don’t need to provide female only changing areas or toilets, if they’ve already provided them for staff?

This is almost the reverse of what Scottish Trans Alliance did in strategic activism by targeting female prisons & women who had no voice or say in who was housed alongside them. The argument was that if STA could persuade prisons to disregard female inmates the right to privacy, dignity & safety, then no other institution or organisation could argue against male
inclusion in female provision. This is how we’ve ended up here - where all female provision has been changed to mixed sex, without women agreeing to this.

I’m well aware lots of women are fine with this set up - so the arguments for 3rd spaces that cater to both trans identifying people & their many female allies are bolstered by all these progressive women & men who will absolutely utilise these 3rd mixed sex spaces to demonstrate their commitment to allyship & support for this most marginalised group of people.

It’s clearly a win win for everyone. Women have their rights to privacy, dignity, safety respected, those who feel ‘unsafe’ in our presence, who are offended by us having rights to maintain those boundaries for privacy, dignity & safety, who are concerned about what all those vulnerable people will do etc. can feel very good about achieving something tangible for ‘trans rights’ while still feeling morally superior in all ways to women.

I can’t imagine anyone taking issue with this brave new world ahead of us. What could possibly go wrong? 🤷🏻‍♀️

Its not a quote from but a paraphrase of the judgement.
https://supremecourt.uk/uploads/uksc_2024_0042_judgment_aea6c48cee.pdf
Press summary is here
https://supremecourt.uk/uploads/uksc_2024_0042_press_summary_8a42145662.pdf
The whole process was live streamed and is still on their website here
https://supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2024-0042#case-summary

We have a single gender neutral changing room at work. Staff done need to get changed very often but do occasionally. Is this still allowed?

It works well, people pop in when getting changed and then take their stuff with them. It is one of the cases where gender neutral works perfectly.

Do you mean single as in one person at a time uses it? If so, that sounds fine.

Yes only big enough for 1 person.

Then it’s necessarily single-sex already!

Cubicles - like on trains and planes - where the toilet and hand washing are behind a door
are fully compliant with the real version of the law.

Locker rooms with communal areas now have to be properly single sex

I imagine some companies and public bodies will take the clarification of the law seriously and will carefully consult so that they comply.

I suspect others will not comply and will carry on until challenged. More clubs will do this too as there won’t be the same pressure as there will be for businesses. I should imagine the WI will be one of those.

If you look back over the past ten years, I think you’ll find that there has been an ongoing transactivist campaign to deliberately target any and all women’s groups, clubs and spaces. It’s been very invasive and extensive. Very few things that women had remain untouched. A few held out, some closed down and the majority let the men in, presumably losing some women along the way, but carried on in their new mixed-sex “women’s” format.

If we want all those women’s spaces, clubs and groups back, I suspect we are going to have to run a similar campaign. We won’t be popular because the men are now embedded and the remaining women are those who agreed with the men being there. Consider the WI which now has a man in a position of power. I suspect that’s quite common too. And you can bet these men will fight to break the groups apart when challenged. In some cases it will be like trying to split from an abusive man. He won’t let go easily.

Apologies, OP! That ended up a bit darker than I expected. I think it will all work out in the end, but it’s still not going to be plain sailing for a while.

I see it often for women only events. No-one is wearing anything other than the clothes you would in the street (so to speak). Women only social gatherings.

But they can’t actually be enforced as women and transwomen spaces only now, as there is no protected characteristic of “inner sense of identifying as a woman” in the EA that unites both biological women and transwomen as one class whereby other biological men are excluded.

In practice, I’m sure most non-trans men wouldn’t be interested in attending anyway, and most will respect women’s right to associate without them. But men can’t be excluded if transwomen are allowed in.

I'm really hoping that it'll mean it is easier for women to run hobby groups specifically for women. I've got a group in mind which I've wanted to set up in my area, but it's precisely the sort of group which transidentified men might feel drawn to as it is -in part- based on women's lived experience. I'm watching this space.

Most people don’t like fully unisex intimate spaces so hopefully money will do the talking there for service providers.

Realistically, tribunal and court cases.

Because the group of social engineers who are at the top of the equalities training for a lot of companies are not going down without fighting.

Look at the case it originally came from. A very mild case of positive action for women. And it was ruled in the first place that this /couldn't/ use self identified sex, and with this SC judgement that it also couldn't use certificated sex, it has to use actual biological sex.

There is not a compulsion to have positive action measures. But if you do, you have to use the category for which the exemption exists that allows you to legally discriminate. That category is now confirmed to be biological sex. Not self identified gender. Not certificated sex.

This is dynamite for policies. Most of which are in much more immediate and clear cut needs for single sex things than positive action.

It's all a bit odd though. It was already settled and agreed between both parties in this case that woman in the equality act did not mean self-identified women. That was the real dynamite and was already agreed. All this confirms is that it also doesn't include men who hold GRCs in woman-gender.

The protesters this weekend are kind of shooting themselves in the foot. They just acknowledged that this judgement DOES mean that women's spaces don't include transwomen. If providing woman-gender spaces was still legal, what were they protesting about? I think in practical terms they were previously assuming that GRC holders had to be allowed in, and that everyone else could sneak in on their coat-tails on the fact that nobody was going to ask if they had a GRC or not.

The next step is getting the current cases settled loudly and expensively. And seeing what EHRC come up with in terms of advice. And Labour confirming they're not going to try and screw things up.