Newnham College Cambridge restricts women’s fellowships …

[SabrinaThwaite]

… to actual women.

newn.cam.ac.uk/research/research-fellowships

There’s proper full on meltdowns going on:

The decision by Newnham College to bar trans people from applying for the Research Fellowship for outstanding female researchers early in their careers constitutes a blatantly discriminatory act of prejudice and intellectual cowardice.

https://feministgenderequality.network/fgen-statement-on-newnham-college-transphobic-fellowship-announcement/

Heaven forfend that we acknowledge systematic oppression combined with feminine socialisation designed to keep us being "nice" and "kind" and giving up stuff for the menz.

Well done to Newnham!

If you had asked me about single-sex colleges back in the nineties, I would have said that they were outdated and possibly even irrelevant in the modern world. Only now do I really understand what an opportunity they presented…and rather regret not applying myself!

On another note, I am rather sorry to see that the University of London single-sex halls are now no more.

I’m just glad Newnham is still here; inevitably some services and institutions will cut the Gordian knot by going mixed sex with no asterisk.

Things are a long time coming and a long time going. This announcement is one of the things FWS has achieved.

I'd say so.

The FEMINIST Equality Gender Netwirk?? Are they sure?

there’s nothing stopping trans men applying….🤔

I’m really pleased to see Newnham being so confident about this. Good for them.

Oh gosh, that’s a complete dog dinner!!

Another ex Newnhamite here. Back when I was young and stupid, my friends and I protested against Germaine Greer saying a transwoman shouldn't hold a Physics role there. As I say, I was young and stupid.

It was a wonderful place to study and live, and should be kept to all women, and I include those who pretend they are men in that. Murray Edwards, or New Hall as it was then sold out ages ago. And had shared rooms in the 90s, I wonder how they dealt with that.....

As far as I could tell all rooms are single occupancy. But see above re communal bath/shower rooms and toilets.

Are the young women expected to share these with any bloke who's gone to all the trouble of finding a bit of paper that says he's a woman?

Good.
Another Newnhamite here.

Doesn't seem like intellectual cowardice to me.

Although the additional info that @ArabellaScott has posted is worrying.

Well done Newnham but 🤦‍♀️ for the admissions criteria. Here’s hoping it catches up.

Legally, any man could challenge the admissions criteria as discriminatory.

Re Murray Edwards, they were mixed sex at postgrad and fellow level anyway. Newnham was the only (supposedly) purely women’s college. Until they introduced self ID about 5/6 years ago, they only admitted female undergrads. (No idea how many males they’ve accepted since then).

Excellent work Newnham

And I wouldn’t be surprised if this happened.

Ah.

'[he] was publicly outed as transgender in 1997, when [he] was elected as a fellow of Newnham College, one of Cambridge’s three all-female colleges.
The decision was strongly opposed by feminist academic and Newnham fellow Germaine Greer, who insisted Dr Padman should be removed, or forced to resign.'

https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/cambridge-university-lgbt-history-month-14233154

https://newn.cam.ac.uk/newnham-news/newnham-academic-receives-gay-times-honour

I was being slow on the uptake because I had forgotten, or never knew, that Newnham is still single-sex.

They're only exempt from sex-discrimination law in this case because there's a pre-1990 instrument (the 1917 College Charter) requiring them to appoint women as fellows. Their announcement refers to Article 3 (attached) which is about promoting women's education generally, but the College Statutes presumably contain more by way of detail.

Schedule 22 para 3 is about employment. I don't know why single-sex colleges are allowed under the Act, but they clearly are. AI thinks it's a Schedule 3 matter, and might very well be right, but there could (also) be a relevant 'enactment' under Schedule 22 para 1 for all I know (the Act contains its own provisions for single-sex schools).

Whatever. If the college is to get out from under its sex equality obligations under the Act, it has to obey its Charter and any relevant laws and - if it's relying on Schedule 3 - admit only biological females as undergraduates.

Why am I banging on about this? Because it's just one example of the way in which civil society (insofar as it embodies different or separate treatment of the two sexes) is held together by a Heath-Robinson arrangement of laws, instruments, and custom. This plays into TRA's hands by making the application of the SC ruling beyond a tight reading of EA2010 itself tricky, if institutions can't be persuaded to do the right thing. And it seems quite a few of them can't.

'I’m convinced that there are biological differences between male and female brains

Most people like to think that gendered behaviour is mostly a question of conditioning.

Lately I’ve been reading primatologist Frans De Waal’s books about chimpanzees and bonobos, whose ancestors only split off from ours six million years ago — I’m interested in how like ours their societies are.

He reveals how deep-seated male and female behaviours are. Young female chimps carry stick “dolls”. Adolescent females beg to be allowed to hold the babies.'

'I guess those parts of my own brain are just miswired'

Padman. https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/cambridge-university-lgbt-history-month-14233154

The joy of working in a Regulated industry is "OOoops waa that the law I broke" is not a get out of Jail card.

Staff are in for a culture shock when the legislation rolls down to the individual.

Great.
I support opportunities for transmen and women.
Why is that transphobic?

Maybe the transwomen should ask for a scholarship programme just for transwomen?
Just a thought.

They de-peopled TIFs in their statement (as in literally ceased to exist in their world)🦧

Of course. How typical of an MRA organisation.

Something very special will be lost if they fuck this up. I helped out at the ceremony in 1998 where they celebrated 50 years of women being awarded degrees rather than just studying. We had so many elderly women come, I spoke to several in their 90s, because the apology from the vice chancellor on behalf of the university meant so much to them. They had amazing stories to tell, I definitely never took my dress off in the street to climb over the railings after curfew like some of them. It was a wonderful weekend.

Strachey used to have Jack and Jill bathrooms, but the knocked it down (due to corroding concrete or something), i haven't seen the replacement.

But some students cho(o)se Newnham because it is/was single sex....