Policy capture: update on the response to our Scottish Affairs paper

We have been delighted by the response we’ve had to our paper on policy capture and gender self-identification in the current edition of Scottish Affairs. It was downloaded almost 5,000 times in the 12 days following publication.

In his column in The Times on Saturday 31 August, the former Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission Trevor Phillips concluded that the unregulated adoption of gender self-identification principles by UK public authorities ‘could undermine protections set out in the Equality Act 2010’.

Over the coming months, we hope to be able to build on our policy capture thesis with a view to writing further articles for peer-reviewed journals, as well as briefings and media articles.

As a collective, we want to continue to engage in the wider debate about the impact of gender self-identification and women’s sex-based rights. The Scottish Government has today announced its intention to publish a bill in this parliamentary session containing proposals to reform the Gender Recognition Act 2004. Our priority will be to generate a detailed, evidence-based response to the consultation, as well as supplementary briefings and media articles.

We anticipate that this analysis will also be directly relevant to any plans for GRA reform at Westminster and would hope that any work undertaken in Scotland could be adapted for a future consultation on GRA reform by the UK Government.

To date, the work we have done in this area has been done on an unpaid basis, squeezed around work, study and family commitments. Today we are launching a crowdfunder to see whether this might be a way to fund some of the work we do on a more sustainable basis.

We are grateful to everyone who has expressed support for our work to date, both privately and publicly.

Thank you.