This blog examines recent developments on gender recognition reform and how the Scottish Government appears to have broken its commitment to actively engage with a range of stakeholders 'to identify the best and most effective way to improve and simplify…
Read More Gender recognition reform: what happened to the manifesto?
This blog places our recent polling results on public attitudes towards gender recognition reform in the context of other polling results on the same topic. Currently, to obtain a Gender Recognition Certificate a person does need not have made any…
Read More Public attitudes to gender recognition reform: an overview
In September 2021 the Scottish Government set out a commitment to reform the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) to allow for a person to change their sex in law based on self-declaration, without medical gatekeeping, in its Programme for Government. We…
The blog below sets out a range of options for reform of the Gender Recognition Act that meet the high level aims of several political parties, that is, to simplify the process and reduce its intrusiveness, particularly in relation to…
Read More Reform of the Gender Recognition Act 2004: options and opportunities
The Gender Recognition Bill was introduced in the House of Lords on 27 November 2003. It was passed by the House of Lords on 10 February 2004, with 155 votes in favour and 57 against. The House of Commons passed it on 25 May.…
In an interview on BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland on 10 September, the First Minister stated that women’s concerns about GRA reform were “not valid” and that it “does not change in any way, shape or form any legal…
Read More Gender recognition reform: are women’s concerns valid?
The current reliance on 'international developments' in relation to gender recognition reform is under-researched and misplaced. The Scottish Government needs to look much more critically at the precedents legislated for in other countries and to consider how gender self-declaration laws…
Read More Gender recognition reform and international developments
“The consultation on the previous draft Bill raised serious questions that currently remain unanswered. These include a failure to address the interaction between self-declaration and the operation of single-sex exceptions under the Equality Act 2010, and a failure to define…
Read More MBM statement on Scottish Government Programme for Government announcement on GRA reform
The Scottish Government has now published the independent analysis of the responses to the consultation on the draft Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. In total 17,058 responses were available for analysis, the vast majority submitted by individuals (16,843), with a…
Read More Consulation on GRA reform: missing data, cost cutting, and delayed publication
Lisa Mackenzie's speech at the For Women Scotland rally outside the Scottish Parliament, 2 September 2021 https://murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/LISA-SPEECH-FWS-RALLY-020921.pdf
