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The EHRC's updated Code of Practice has just dropped. It affects how your gym, GP and local council treats those who use their services - including trans+ people. Here's what it says, what it gets wrong, and why it matters.
This week, the Government submitted to Parliament the EHRC’s updated Code of Practice to the Equality Act, introducing some of the most significant changes to how sex and gender are interpreted in public life for over a decade.
These changes have been presented as necessary for women’s safety. Yet they do nothing to address the actual violence and inequality women face every day.
Over the last year, there has been near constant discussion in the media, in politics and online about women’s rights, women’s safety and women’s protection. On paper, this would seem like something to welcome. With one woman killed by a man in the UK every three days, and the Government describing violence against women and girls as a National Emergency, assertive action cannot come soon enough.
However, despite clear and consistent data pointing to the source of this epidemic — men who abuse their power — something has been lost in translation.
Instead of genuinely addressing the known sources of harm to women – the media, certain politicians and even the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) have directed their focus towards the trans+ community instead, a tiny, marginalised group who are being used as an easy target and an effective distraction.
Last year, the UK Supreme Court ruled on the definition of “sex” in the Equality Act, defining this in terms of “biological sex” only. This ruling overturned 15 years of legal understanding, and undermined the careful balance of rights we’ve had for years. The consequences were immediate.
Within months, organisations like the WI, Girlguiding and Hampstead Ponds faced legal attacks on the trans-inclusive policies they have had for years, or even decades. These women’s and girls’ groups that had happily come together to socialise, serve their communities and develop shared interests are now being painfully divided.
Meanwhile, after years of trans+ people using gender-aligned services without issue, now anyone’s gender presentation can be questioned to establish who is ‘male’ and who is ‘female’ — a reality that affects not just trans people, but any woman who doesn’t fit a narrow idea of how women are supposed to look. Once again, the impact on trans men, the intersex and non-binary community has been completely overlooked.
This week’s updated Code of Practice — which has taken months to finalise — sets out how the Supreme Court ruling should be applied in practice. The EHRC’s Code lays out these exclusionary policies in stark and painful detail, while remaining confusing and burdensome for service providers and businesses, and lacking any guidance for organisations who wish to remain trans inclusive.
As women, we face so many pressing concerns: misogyny, gender inequality, violence, difficulties accessing appropriate healthcare and growing threats to our bodily autonomy and reproductive rights. Yet, these changes to Equality Act interpretation and updates to the Code of Practice — hailed originally as a “victory” for women — do nothing to address these issues. Instead, they only increase division, falsely pitting one group against another, and making life harder for trans+ people and cis women alike.
Excluding trans people will not make women safer. Now, more than ever, we need the media and politicians to report truthfully about the sources of violence and oppression that affect women — both cis and trans — and meaningfully address these longstanding issues by bringing affected communities together, not scapegoating a vulnerable minority.
Over 100,000 women have signed our open letter because they know what the data shows: trans people do not pose a risk to women — rather, trans+ people themselves face unacceptable rates of harassment and violence, and share many of the same issues we ourselves face. What does pose a risk is a climate where women are encouraged to fear trans+ people, and one another, while the realities of male violence remain unchecked. Communities that once simply shared spaces together are now being pushed into suspicion, scrutiny and conflict.
None of this makes women – mothers, sisters, daughters – safer. It simply leaves another vulnerable group carrying the weight of a wider political failure.