Welsh Government To Redefine ‘Women’

Under planned new laws, the Welsh Government is set to redefine women to include self-identifying transgender ‘women’.

Labour’s First Minister of Wales Mark Drakeford sparked fury on Monday as it emerged that he wants to change the law so that transwomen can stand as females in Senedd elections.

The proposal was revealed in a leaked draft of its Gender Quotas Bill which proposes that half the candidates in any list to be members of the Senedd must be women. But the report also shows that this would include biological men who identity as the opposite gender.

A spokesman for the Welsh Government spokesman said its “proposed model for quotas is designed to maximise the chances of achieving a Senedd comprised of at least 50% women”

The Telegraph reports: The definition further stated that transgender meant “a person who is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning [their] sex to female by changing physiological or other attributes of sex”.

It also stated that a constituency returning officer could not challenge or make any inquiry in relation to a statement made by a candidate.

David TC Davies, the Welsh Secretary, told the Telegraph he had “grave concerns” about the report and was meeting members of various groups to discuss the proposals.

“One of my greatest fears is that the plan will have a detrimental impact on women’s rights across our country. Those rights have been hard fought for and I fear could now be undermined by the Labour-run Welsh Government’s ill-thought policy,” he said.

The plans echo those put forward by the Scottish Government to make it easier for people to legally change gender.

They were blocked by Alister Jack, the Scottish Secretary, who argued that the Bill watered down protections for single sex spaces and contravened UK-wide equality legislation.

Mark Drakeford, the First Minister of Wales, has long argued that he believes “transgender women are women”.

Last year he told the Senedd: “My starting point is the same as Penny Mordaunt’s – the UK minister responsible at the time – who said that the UK government’s starting point was that transgender women are women. That’s my starting point in this debate.

“It is a difficult area where people feel very strongly on different sides of an argument, and an argument that divides people who agree on most other things.

“In such a potentially divisive issue, the responsibility of elected representatives is not to stand on the certainties of their own convictions, but instead to work hard to look for opportunities for dialogue, to find ways of promoting understanding rather than conflict, and to demonstrate respect rather than to look for exclusion … to me, inclusivity is absolutely what we should be aiming for here.”

Bill ‘unfair’ to women

However, Cathy Larkman, Welsh co-ordinator of the Women’s Rights Network, said the move would undermine the Bill’s gender equality intent.

She said it was likely to see men self-identifying as women to greatly improve their chances of selection and muscling females out.