Equality impact assessment - Impact on Women - EHRC

[IwantToRetire]

Impact on women

The government’s position is that single-sex services should be protected to ensure women’s privacy, dignity and safety. The government also believes in upholding the Equality Act’s protections for trans people and ensuring suitable provision for them.

The published Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) in the main part of this document sets out that the updates to the Code will overall create benefits on the basis of sex. Overall the EIA deemed that the positive impact outweighed the negative.

The Minister for Women and Equalities commissioned an additional assessment of the impact of the Code on women’s rights and protections. This assessment follows below.

Clarity for service providers

Service providers may consider the Code provides certainty and clarity in terms of restricting access to their women-only services and providing protections to women’s privacy, dignity and safety. The Code makes it clear to them that providing women-only services is on the basis of biological sex and therefore they can plan and deliver their services on that basis.

The Code offers additional guidance to service providers. It helps them to make decisions suited to their specific circumstances which reduces the risk of successful legal challenge. Any form of challenge, even if unsuccessful, can create financial difficulty for small organisations and divert resources from delivery of front-line services. Organisations may also welcome transparency on how to organise associations.

The Code provides information on the legal duty on employers to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their employees, and we would expect employers to take further action to protect staff accordingly.

The Code provides information on how associations can be formed, and offers clarity that women can legally establish groups with others who have shared interests or lived experiences. Participating in these groups can offer valuable social, physical and mental health benefits and can support positive relations between women.

The Code also provides guidance to help bear in mind the rights of all users, including the needs of women who need access to single-sex services.

Safety for women

The Code encourages service providers to clearly communicate who services are designed for – for example, via signage – and provides guidance on single-sex provision, empowering women and making them feel confident in making informed choices when accessing services. The Code’s guidance on single-sex provision may also empower women to request women-only services where these are not currently provided, and in circumstances where the conditions for providing such services are met. This could be especially useful for those women who, for cultural or religious reasons, are unable to share some spaces with men. It also particularly supports those women who have experienced domestic abuse or violence from men and feel unable to use services open to those who are not biologically female, including refuges or homeless accommodation.

For pregnant and breastfeeding women the updated Code highlights that harassment relating to breastfeeding may also constitute unlawful harassment on the grounds of sex, confirming that women are protected. The Code also highlights that while the protected characteristic of pregnancy and maternity is not covered directly under the harassment protections in the Act, it is indirectly covered as it amounts to harassment related to sex.

From https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/equality-act-2010-code-of-practice-for-services-public-functions-and-associations-2026/equality-impact-assessment

(This comes at the end of their impact assessment and think for some reason I never read that far. Sharing for anyone else who hasn't seen it)

Thank you for sharing this.

Not sure how much it will really alter things for those such as the 160 plus MPs who signed against women and gay people retaining legal protections.

My MP's response to being asked about that was fairly symptomatic I think: says they absolutely support women's single sex need for spaces, same sex HCPs and resources etc. But signed because the 'guidance starts from a position of exclusion'. So essentially has not read or understood the SCJ, does not understand that women and gay rights cannot nicely exist and function without exclusion being involved in practical terms, and so is mostly acting on their own feelz and idealistic thinking devoid of any real knowledge. That is the level. Seriously. It's beyond depressing.

because the 'guidance starts from a position of exclusion'.

Does your MP have difficulty understanding other simple concepts?

Indeed. All inclusion, apart from 'The Entire Human Race', starts from a position of exclusion, doesn't it?

I struggle to know what the alternative could look like. Possibly what was wanted was a whole lot of soothing platitudes and emphasis on the very most important people in the whole thing, with the sex based protections retained but with a lot of apology and hidden as much as possible.

Since obviously, you cannot provide women with same sex health carers, and single sex spaces and facilities without excluding and saying no to men.

Or they are living in some fantasy land where the two things can exist in the same space at the same time.

It's fascinating how powerful the word "inclusive" has become. All sorts of people are excluded from all sorts of everyday activities for all sorts of eminently sensible reasons.

'Inclusive' with a wholly bastardised and dishonest twisting. Its so frequently used to mean only men with gender identities, while by 'including' those men - in fact forcing them upon the women and the space without consent, seeing the space as something these men have a greater right and claim to than any woman could - actively excludes many women from the women's provision.

The first duty of a women's provision obviously being to be 'inclusive of' - accessible to - all women. Letting men into women's single sex spaces isn't inclusive at all.

But they really don't like to have the reality of their happy little illusion pointed out, and see it as you being mean and unkind. You get lots of the 'I care about women from minorities I'm not racist, honest and disabled women and traumatised women some of my friends are women, my wife in fact is a woman' but they can't and don't want to unpack the cognitive dissonance.

For even noticing never mind caring about and pointing out the consequences to women of their unilateral favouring of and bias towards these men, on the grounds that they are men, while weaponising the language of equality to achieve it. They get very hurt and sad and superior when you fail to play along. Basically they would like to be a bit male supremacist but not have to see or acknowledge it in themselves, and so have you nicely pretend they are not to be comforting.