Who are WE?    Why now?

WE are a collective of Women’s Equality Party members and founding members who are concerned by the roll back of our sex-based rights.

WE are concerned by the direction of the party that WE founded. A political party built with our funds, with our labour, with our passion, informed by our feminist principles.

WE aim to build this website & blog to create a forum for WEP members to understand how self ID impacts on our lives as women, and specifically on our 7 policy areas.

Our movement formed in 2019. Since then our 'Declaration of Sex Based Rights' has collected over 1300 signatures from fellow WEP members and supporters. 

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Please click  here to add your name.

Why now?

Since the Conservative government announced a public consultation of the Gender Recognition Act 2004, government departments and NGOs have been adopting policies of sex self-ID. This has been done without due process and in direct contravention of current law.

Sex self-ID directly undermines the rights of women and girls as written in law. A failure to uphold these rights is a failure to uphold legal responsibilities to protect women and girls. As a result we have seen male sex offenders in women’s prisons, the end of women’s single sex sports, the skewing of sex-based data, and the inclusion of males in rape crisis and DV services. This has been done without the consultation or inclusion of women, without due risk assessment, impact assessment and without due process.

The Conservatives have overseen this with their trademark disregard for the impact of their policies on women and girls.


What’s new?

Three years ago WEP voted to consult the membership on adopting policies of self ID. Specifically to assess the impact of sex self-ID on our seven (sex-based). policy areas. 

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The consultation appears to be in the long grass. 

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A member's assembly was designed by Nat Cen to formulate the questions that should be put to the membership. Although this is not what the motion detailed, the process has led to some excellent witnesses testimonies as to why sex-matters, and the devastating impact of self ID on our 7 policy areas.

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WE are thankful to

Prof Alice Sullivan, Karen Ingala-Smith, Dr Shrereen Benjamin, Dr Jane Clare Jones, Kristina Harrison, Ruth Serwotka, Rebecca Bull

The WEP consultation and what came before...

In late 2018, a motion was brought to conference. This motion was pro sex self-ID. This motion was not passed and in a clear majority voted for the motion to be 'referred back'.

The motion was deeply problematic in many ways. One such issue was its proposal to remove the ‘spousal veto’. The spousal veto (introduced by the coalition government 2013)  refers to the legal right for a spouse to annul their marriage if their partner changes their legal sex. The idea that WEP would be passing a motion that would compel a woman to be married against her will, and remove her right to annulment is extraordinary.  A key example of how poor quality debate translates into poor quality policy.

Since the Conservatives put self-ID on the table, WEP has maintained an uneasy silence as headline after headline have exposed the many ways that sex self-ID puts women at risk, and how it undermines our legal rights and protections. 

Where WEP should have been leading and facilitating respectful, fact-based discussions, a deafening silence resounded. In their absence, half-fact, poor quality information and misleading information was allowed to flourish. Any woman seeking a discussion or clarification was vilified, misrepresented and silenced. Concerns were framed as bigotry, asserting of our rights and language became acts of hate.

WEPs inability to stand for balanced respectful debate, placed and continues to place women at risk.

'Woman' is not a costume, it is not a feeling, it is not an identity..."

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@WepWomen

#WorthyOfRespect #WomenWontWheesht

#debate #sexnotgender #sexmatters #WomenCount 

#WEPWomensDeclaration #WorthyOfRespect