Men who identify as the opposite sex can stand as women for the Senedd, a leaked report has revealed.
According to a Welsh Government document, a biological man who claims to be a woman will count as a female candidate under its Gender Quota Bill.
The report defines a ‘transgender woman’ as one “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”.
Anti-women
Welsh Secretary David TC Davies expressed “grave concerns” about the report and feared “the plan will have a detrimental impact on women’s rights across our country”.
And Cathy Larkman, of Women’s Rights Network Wales, accused activists of “hijacking legislation that should benefit women and increase female participation in public life in order to embed a toxic and misogynist ideology”.
The likely outcome of any such plan, she argued, is “males self-identifying as women in order to greatly improve their chances of selection, and thereby muscling actual women out”.
Inclusivity
Last year, Wales’ First Minister Mark Drakeford claimed “transgender women are women”.
During a Senedd exchange on the inclusion of transgender athletes in sport, the Welsh Labour Leader redefined the meaning of ‘women’ to embrace biological men.
He said that on “such a potentially divisive issue, the responsibility of elected representatives is not to stand on the certainties of their own convictions”.
Drakeford also said: “To me, inclusivity is absolutely what we should be aiming for here.”
