Protecting women and girls
Issue: On 3 June 2024, we pledged to define the protected characteristic of sex in the Equality Act as biological sex.
- Labour passed the Equality Act more than a decade ago, but it is now clear there is a lack of clarity in the law, leaving single-sex providers vulnerable to challenge, risking the safety of women and girls.
- That is why we will introduce primary legislation to clarify that the protected characteristic of sex in the Equality Act means biological sex, in addition to legislating that a person can only have one sex in the eyes of the law in the United Kingdom.
- This will ensure that single-sex services and single-sex spaces can be provided, ensuring protection for women and girls, as well as enabling the debate on these issues to move onto a more informed and constructive basis.
We are doing this by:
- Introducing primary legislation to clarify that the protected characteristic of sex means biological sex in the Equality Act to ensure proper protections for women and girls. This follows the recommendations of the Equality and Human Rights Commission who advised that defining ‘sex’ as biological sex for the purposes of the Equality Act ‘would bring greater legal clarity’ (ECHR, News, 4 April 2023, link; The Daily Telegraph, 2 June 2024, link).
- Protecting single-sex spaces such as women’s-only wards in hospitals, to ensure women are treated with dignity and respect. We believe biological women should almost always be accommodated on same sex wards with other biological women. There are very few circumstances in which mixed sex accommodation can be clinically justified. That is why we are making it more straightforward for hospitals to make a women’s-only ward a space for biological women, so they can be treated with the dignity and respect they deserve.
- Protecting freedom of association for women and men. We are correcting the current situation to allow single-sex organisations, for example a women’s victim support group, to restrict membership to biological women.
- Ensuring that a person in the United Kingdom can only have one legal sex in the eyes of the law. We are one United Kingdom and it cannot be right to have people legally recognised as different genders in different parts of the country so we will establish in law that gender recognition in a reserved matter.
Key political point:
- The Labour Party cannot be trusted to protect women’s rights with Sir Keir Starmer backing self-identification for years and repeatedly refusing to say whether a woman can have a penis. Keir Starmer previously pledged to reform the Gender Recognition Act to include self-identification and when asked whether a woman can have a penis, he said: ‘I’m not… I don’t think we can conduct this debate with… I don’t think that discussing this issue in this way helps anyone in the long run’ (Pink News, 20 February 2020, link; The Daily Telegraph, 28 March 2022, link).
Labour’s response:
- This morning, Labour called reforms to protect women a ‘distraction’ which is ‘not needed’. STUDIO: ‘And are, in your belief, the Conservatives right to promise to amend the Equality Act in that way?’ HEALEY: ‘No, he’s not right. It’s not needed. This is an election distraction’ (BBC Radio 5 Live, 3 June 2024, archived).
