Call for input: Incorrect guidance on single-sex spaces and gender self-identification
The Minister for Women and Equalities is seeking examples of policy or guidance in which public bodies – or organisations that advise public and private organisations – wrongly suggest that people have a legal right to access single-sex spaces and services according to their self-identified gender.
Applies to England, Scotland and Wales
Documents
Details
The government is looking to understand how public bodies, and organisations who advise public and private organisations, might currently be misinterpreting the law on providing single-sex spaces or services within Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales).
Where certain conditions are met, businesses and other organisations can legally provide single and separate-sex services. This includes services such as toilets, changing rooms, and female-only fitness classes, which may exclude transgender people of the opposite biological sex who do not have a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC). Where it is justified, they may also be able to exclude transgender people with GRCs. In some cases organisations believe they are required to allow self-identifying transgender people to access these services.
The Gender Recognition Act 2004 enables people who have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and who have lived in their acquired gender for at least 2 years to apply for a GRC, which changes their sex for most legal purposes. Transgender people without a GRC legally remain their birth sex.
The Equality Act 2010 allows service providers to operate single-sex and separate-sex services – such as toilets, domestic abuse refuges, changing rooms – when they have a good reason to do so (for example, only one sex needs to use the service or space) and the limited provision is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. The Equality and Human Rights Commission have published guidance on the existing legislation.
Please submit any examples of policy or guidance which states that people have a legal right to access single-sex spaces and services according to their self-identified gender by completing this short online response by 11.59pm on Wednesday 26 June 2024.
Submissions will be used to help the government understand organisations’ current interpretation of the law on single-sex services and spaces.
We do not ask for any personal details, so your response will remain anonymous. Individual responses will not be published.
How to respond
To respond to the call for input, please visit the survey link.
The call for input covers Great Britain and will be open for 8 weeks from 1 May to 26 June 2024.
When you respond, please:
- submit examples of policy or guidance from public bodies or those that advise public and private organisations, which might wrongly suggest that people have a legal right to access single-sex spaces according to their self-identified gender
- provide a link or upload a copy of your example of policy or guidance and then answer a small number of questions about your submission – we can receive most types of text documents and PDFs, but no audio or moving image files
- do not include personal data of yourself or others in your responses – we are not asking for personal data
- complete a separate response for each example of policy or guidance you wish to submit
Data protection statement
All submissions will be handled in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK General Data Protection Regulation.