By Raquel Rosario Sánchez, Spokeswoman for FiLiA 

In March 2020, news outlets reported on the UK government’s plan to indefinitely postpone the proposed reform of the Gender Recognition Act 2004. Although a public consultation on the matter closed in Autumn 2018, the government has yet to produce a report on it. The consultation received more than 100,000 responses after women’s rights campaigners raised concerns regarding the clashes between sex-based rights, which are currently protected under the Equality Act 2010, and the policy ramifications of “sex self-identification”. According to government officials, the reforms which aimed to streamline the process which currently allows people to change their sex in legal documents, are now considered to be “divisive” and do not expect any changes to be enacted. 

At FiLiA, we would like to note the following:

This political development is the result of the resolve, strength and determination women around the country have displayed when confronted with an unacceptably hostile and aggressive political climate. We note the remarkable courage of women from all walks of life, who stepped up to fill a vacuum created by organisations tasked with a civic duty (such as political parties, academia and the third sector), which made a decision to delegate an important opportunity to lead from the front on a crucial issue and during such a pivotal moment in history. 

We owe this development to all the women who spoke up among their friends and colleagues, who agitated in their communities, who wrote or visited their local representatives, and who organised using an array of tactics and strategies. The collective power of each of these feminist actions are the reason why women’s sex-based rights remain protected in 2020, and hopefully in the years to come. Most importantly, these actions have managed to rebuild an energised, furious and mighty women’s rights movement which is once again fit for purpose.

At FiLiA, we are grateful to every sister who pushed back and who will continue to do so, as we tackle the societal policy capture which has already taken place, bypassing democratic scrutiny, and permeating local policies, academia, the private sector and the NHS, even before a reform of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 was brought forward. 

Equally, we note with concern the intimidatory climate in which women around the United Kingdom have been forced to operate in the defence for their sex-based rights. On this issue, women have faced vilification, ostracism, unemployment, bullying, harassment and violence. Everyone concerned about the sustainable functioning of society should be horrified by the democratic decay which has been allowed to fester in this debate, and which women have been made to endure, in large part as a result of the dithering and shortcomings of actors in the system who ought to know better. Although abuse against women’s rights campaigners is nothing new, it is neither inevitable nor is it acceptable. 

Today, women in the United Kingdom join the ranks of women in the Dominican Republic who have also withstood sustained pressure to autocratically impose ‘gender identity’ and ‘sex self-identification’ concepts into law, and have recently managed to successfully halt these efforts by shining a light of the top-down nature of these anti-democratic efforts. With renewed enthusiasm, we look forward to watching more women around the world stand up for their sex-based rights, as we continue to do so here in the UK. 

15th April 2020