Kemi Badenoch, the U.K.’s Minister for Women and Equalities, has announced that she is considering amending the Equality Act, the U.K.’s primary piece of anti-discrimination law, to allow the exclusion of trans people from single-sex spaces.
The proposed changes would redefine the protected characteristic of ‘sex’ to specifically mean biological sex, which can be different from a person’s ‘legal sex’ if they have been through the process of legal gender change and obtained a gender recognition certificate (GRC).
The move comes after Badenoch wrote to the U.K. Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) in February 2023 to ask that they look into amending the Act.
In their response the EHRC stated that “if ‘sex’ is defined as biological sex for the purposes of [the Equality Act 2010], this would bring greater legal clarity”, citing various supposed benefits for cisgender women.
The proposal is the U.K. government’s latest attack on transgender people, the result of the growing influence of anti-trans ‘gender critical’ groups on both the government and the EHRC.
It is astonishing that the organisation responsible for advising the UK Government on equality and human rights issues should suggest that the rights of people who are included in one of the nine protected characteristics should be sacrificed to no-one else’s benefit.
The letter from Baroness Faulkner, Chair of the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission can be found here: https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/our-work/news/clarifying-definition-‘sex’-equality-act
The purpose of this suggestion is to exclude trans women, but it will also make life much more complicated for trans men. It is clear that those responsible for this document know nothing about trans people and presumably have not met any or talked with trans people about the issues that they face. It is no wonder that so many senior staff at the EHRC have resigned. They did not join the EHRC to reduce equality or tamper with other people’s human rights.