With the Senedd elections upcoming, we’ve been looking with some envy at Scotland and the Alba Party’s commitment to women’s rights:
ALBA believes women have the right to maintain their sex-based protections as set out in the Equality Act 2010. These include female only spaces such as changing rooms, hospital wards, sanitary and sleeping accommodation, refuges, hostels and prisons.
ALBA believes women have the right to refuse consent to males in single sex spaces or males delivering intimate services to females such as washing, dressing and counselling.
ALBA believes women have the right to single sex sports to ensure fairness and safety at all levels of competition.
ALBA believes women have the right to organise themselves according to their sex class across a range of cultural, leisure, educational and political activities.
And even Scottish Labour have been shamed in to supporting female sports and women-only hospital wards.
The situation is less cheering here in Wales. We’ll be publishing all responses to our question next week but we can at least tell you that, on the regional lists, Gwlad and the Communist Party support women’s rights as set out in the Equality Act.
Here’s Gwlad’s reply to a tweet from one of our members:
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we support single-sex spaces
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we support the availability of gender reassignment
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the latter is a serious issue, to be done with professional guidance and not on a whim
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people affected by these issues need to be properly supported.
And here’s the Communist Party’s statement on behalf of all its candidates:
The Welsh Communist Party and our Senedd candidates are committed to defending the sex-based rights and protections of women and girls, including the protections for women on the grounds of their sex as set out in the 2010 Equality Act.
We also had this from Sean Driscoll, Cardiff West Conservative candidate:
In response to your question the simple answer is YES.
If you won’t respect my sex – don’t expect my X.
