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The fringe meeting offered by the LD group Liberal Voice for Women at York Novotel on Friday evening 13 March at 8:00 pm, looks set to enliven the whole weekend.
The panel members are stellar names in feminist politics: Susan Smith is one of the successful appellants in the ‘For Women Scotland’ case against the bumbling SNP ministers. They had tried unlawfully to include transwomen (holders of a separate protected characteristic) in a positive action measure intended to appoint more female members to public boards in Scotland. Susan will recount her experiences of combatting injustice before, during and since that famous victory in the Supreme Court.
Maya Forstater is the eponymous campaigner whose successful appeal against her unfair dismissal led to her widely shared philosophical tenets – that sex is real, cannot be changed, and is materially important in all our lives – becoming a “protected belief” under the Equality Act. Maya, who is CEO of the charity Sex Matters which was an intervenor in the Supreme Court case, intends to point to the clarity which the judgment now provides to organisations, and the endorsement of this clarity by a recent High Court case, and will explain what councils and organisations need to do now – implement, without further delay, the legal provisions which have been uncontroversially enacted in law since the 1970s.
Akua Reindorf, KC, a leading barrister in equality cases, will be speaking in a private capacity to cut through the noise, dispelling the myths and obfuscations which have been peddled about the Supreme Court ruling, handed down almost a whole year ago. Liberal Voice for Women hopes liberal and democratic members who like to engage in rational discussion of policy will join us in exploring the issues contained in the case; and which will be the basis of F14, “Diversity, Inclusion and Representation,” due to be debated at conference on Saturday afternoon.
