EHRC bars men who self-ID as women from female-only jobs

Companies cannot recruit men who self-identify as women for roles which require females, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has said.

Updated guidance from the equalities watchdog specifies that, under the Equality Act, jobs with a sex-based occupational requirement “that an applicant is a woman” are limited to those whose legal sex is female.

However, this does mean that men who have a gender recognition certificate stating they are female can still apply.

Legal sex

Explaining its rationale, the EHRC said that “clarity” was required as some employers “have incorrectly applied occupational requirement exceptions”.

It added that “where an occupational requirement relates to sex, the law says this means a person’s legal sex as recorded on their birth certificate or gender recognition certificate”.

The watchdog’s chairwoman Baroness Falkner of Margravine warned that the EHRC would take action against ‘rogue’ employers who failed to uphold the Equality Act.

Biological reality

Dr Nicola Williams, Director of Fair Play For Women, welcomed the new guidance for making clear that “men who self-identity as women are not female and should not be recruited as such”.

Allowing males to do jobs reserved for females, she said, “is unfair on the women who apply and the people who rely on a woman being in that role for reasons of privacy, dignity and safety”.

But she argued that expecting “a woman to waive her need for privacy or safety simply because a man gets a certificate” is an absurdity of law.

‘Lunacy’

In January, a job advert for a Women’s Support Domestic Abuse Practitioner, Dundee Women’s Aid explained that it “positively welcomes applications from all applicants who identify as women within all sections of the community particularly those from the LGBT community”.

Helen Joyce, Director of Advocacy for women’s group Sex Matters, branded the news as “yet another example of the lunacy of self-ID overwriting real, sex-based considerations – especially those related to women’s needs and vulnerabilities”.