Rishi Sunak wants to change the Equality Act by introducing explicit legal protections for biological women in same-sex spaces such as changing rooms and hospital wards.
The prime minister plans to create a legal distinction between real women and men who identify as women. The move would ban men from accessing single-sex spaces such as female-only hospital wards and competing against women in sports.
According to The Times:
Kemi Badenoch, the women and equalities minister, asked the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to consider the “benefits or otherwise” of changing the legal definition of sex.
She said the need had become more pressing following moves in Scotland to try to make it easier for transgender people to gain legal recognition, which the government claims is at odds with the UK-wide Equality Act.
Writing in The Times, Baroness Falkner of Margravine, chairwoman of the EHRC, said that she had “recommended to the government that it consider adopting a biological definition of sex in the Equality Act”.
Britain’s equalities laws have become mired in “ambiguity and confusion” over transgender rights, the head of the human rights watchdog warned.
She said that changing the law would bring “clarity” and ensure that single-sex spaces for women could only be accessed by people born as women while also providing protection for trans people.
However, she admitted that the move would cause controversy in an area that had become “so polarised and contentious that it is inhibiting civil debate”.
Under the plans being considered by Badenoch, the Equality Act would be changed to create a legal distinction between people who were born a woman and those who have transitioned to become female.
At present anyone who has been granted a Gender Recognition Certificate is legally recognised as belonging to the opposite sex. But if the changes go ahead, transgender people would remain the sex they were born as.
It could stop trans women accessing single-sex spaces such as women-only hospital wards and competing in sport against “biological” women.
It would also mean that women who transitioned to become a man would retain rights for a woman such as maternity leave.
In a separate letter to Badenoch, Falkner highlighted a series of potential benefits to biological women and trans men if the legislation was changed. Providers of “single sex and separate sex services” would be able to restrict access to biological women only.
Falconer gives the example of a hospital that wants to run women-only wards.
“A biological definition of sex would make it simpler to make a women’s only ward a space for biological women,” she said.
Regarding sport, she said that at present organisers must demonstrate it is necessary to exclude trans women “in the interests of fairness or safety”.
She added: “A biological definition of sex would mean that organisers could exclude trans women from women’s sport without this additional burden.”
Lesbian groups would be able to “restrict membership to biological women”, likewise a women-only book club.
