The Supreme Court’s ruling that the legal definition of ‘woman’ is ‘biological female’ should have meant game over for trans rights activists. One would have thought that following last summer’s judgement, there would be no more men in women’s toilets or changing rooms. But in the clearest sign yet that women cannot give up the fight, there comes news that the government is advertising for a senior civil servant to ‘lead on trans equality’.
This is not a minor role. The recruit will be a policy manager at the Cabinet Office, heading up some of the government’s ‘top priorities’. According to the advert, the new member of staff will work as ‘part of the Office for Equality and Opportunity wide team’ with responsibility for ‘handling the implications of the recent supreme court case […], leading on the implications of the ruling on trans people.’ In case potential recruits are in any doubt about where their sympathies should lie, the specification is clear: they will be in charge of ensuring the government can ‘take steps to improve outcomes for trans people in the UK’.
Women’s rights will, at best, be an afterthought
Readers might be forgiven for thinking that, nine months on from the ruling, the government might be wanting to hire senior civil servants who can ‘improve outcomes for women’. But no. There have been no adverts for Cabinet Office policy managers tasked with overseeing change in hospitals, prisons, universities and workplaces where women have suffered the indignity of having to undress in front of biological males, or had their free speech curtailed for saying exactly what the supreme court confirmed. There is no nice salary and generous pension on offer for someone to evaluate the state of women’s sex-based rights.
Advertising for a senior civil servant to ‘lead on trans equality’ reveals Labour ministers to be in no rush to implement policies and practices that risk the ire of transgender activists. Indeed, Bridget Phillipson, the government’s women and equalities minister, has been on a go-slow ever since the supreme court judgment was announced last April. She stands accused of delaying the publication of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) guidance on sex and single-sex spaces, which would require businesses and public bodies to protect women-only spaces.
Her department’s prevarications and repeated requests for clarification mean that guidance drawn up in 2019 is still in place. This means that, according to the Cabinet Office, people should be able to choose which toilets to use based on their gender identity, and ‘misgendering’ someone by using pronouns that refer to their sex constitutes ‘bullying’.
Phillipson, by all accounts, seems quite happy with this status quo. Last month, in a challenge to the supreme court’s judgment brought by the Good Law Project, her lawyer argued in court that allowing transgender women – biological males – into women’s single-sex spaces would not be a breach of the Equality Act. The judge in the case accused her of trying to ‘rewrite’ the supreme court ruling.
In the context of all these delays and legal challenges, the decision by the cabinet office to advertise for a senior civil servant to ‘lead on trans equality’ sends the message that women still have a long way to go in their fight for sex-based rights. We still have public officials in thrall to transgender ideology. And woke is far from dead.
Rather than fulfilling their legal responsibilities, as set out by the EHRC, civil servants are being allowed to delay until potential workarounds have been implemented. Women’s rights will, at best, be an afterthought, considered only once ‘steps to improve outcomes for trans people in the UK’ are in place.
Yet while Phillipson is dithering, women have been busy. Recent months have seen legal victories for the Darlington nurses and Sandie Peggie, a nurse in Fife, all of whom worked in hospitals where they were expected to share changing rooms with male employees who identify as transgender women. Just yesterday, Jennifer Melle, a nurse disciplined for calling a male transgender paedophile ‘Mr’, was reinstated in her post.
Their successes are to be celebrated. But to bring such a case to court requires considerable energy, time and money, as well as a willingness to be thrust into the public eye and risk being accused of bigotry. The decision to advertise for a senior civil servant to ‘lead on trans equality’ reveals the contempt far too many in the political class have for these brave women.
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