Abouterf

Not too long ago, stating that biological sex was real was a career-ending act of bravery. Kathleen Stock was hounded out of her university job. Maya Forstater had to take her former employer to a landmark tribunal. Kemi Badenoch and Rosie Duffield were told they were on the wrong side of history. Our public bodies, charities, political figures, and sections of the media all lined up to condemn these women as bigots. That establishment was wrong. The Supreme Court settled it beyond doubt: when the Equality Act says woman, it means a biological woman. Every woman who was targeted for saying that sex means biological sex has since been vindicated. An apology is owed to each and every one of them, although I won’t hold my breath. The EHRC's Code of Practice, which took effect this week, provides clear guidance to organisations on how single-sex spaces and services, like changing rooms, should operate on the basis of biological sex. This is hugely welcome, particularly for the countless women and girls who have been denied their legal rights for so long. It is a tribute to the tireless campaigners who fought for years to get here, despite the Labour Government’s delays and attempts to water it down. However, we should be clear that the Code does not change the law. All the Code does is provide guidance on how to follow the law. Those who try to block the Code will not block the law that sits behind it. The Green, Lib Dem and Labour MPs who are pretending otherwise should know better. Yet more than a year after the Supreme Court ruling, compliance is still falling short and there has been no accountability for the many institutions who have put women at risk of harm because they misunderstood the law. Take the Nursing and Midwifery Council. Even after the ruling, they continued disciplinary investigations against the Darlington Nurses, who did nothing more than ask for single-sex changing rooms. They have not issued an apology for getting things so badly wrong. Then there's NHS England, which has still not updated guidance that allows men to be placed on female hospital wards simply because they identify as women. That policy is unlawful, yet it remains in force today - putting the safety, privacy and dignity of female patients at risk. Things are no better in the prison system, where violent male inmates are still being housed in women’s prisons, where they share communal spaces with vulnerable women. It has been a legal requirement to house male and female prisoners separately since 1823, but apparently that doesn’t apply if the man says he is a woman. For too long our public institutions treated radical gender ideology as if it were gospel and treated women's rights as something to be tossed aside in the face of this new religion. The Code of Practice is an important tool in reversing the spread of that ideology, but alone it is not enough. Bridget Phillipson needs to get a grip and hold government bodies to account if they refuse to uphold the law. Our institutions must establish why they were so vulnerable to being misled and how they will prevent the next faddish ideology that comes along from taking root. We need institutions that we can trust, not ones that are so quick to abandon common sense and the law. That is the least that women and the wider public deserve.