PREVIOUS CAMPAIGNS
Christmas comes but once a year. Unfortunately our single-sex spaces are under attack every day.
On 26 November 22 we launched our #AllIWantForChristmas that ran up until 24 December. Like the previous year we focussed on the need to protect single-sex spaces for women & girls. #AllIWantForChristmas #SilencedRights #SaveOurSpaces #RespectMySex #WomensRightsNetwork Why do we still need to campaign for single sex spaces? Many retail stores are ignoring the safety dignity & privacy of women & girls by providing mixed sex changing rooms At Women’s Rights Network all we want for Christmas are our sex-based rights, as specified in law, by the Equality Act 2010. Women want single-sex changing facilities. We want single-sex toilets. We want sports to be competed in sex-based categories. We want women’s prisons and hospital wards to exclude males. High street stores are very happy to allow men to “identify into” the women’s changing areas. Women who don’t know about these policies believe they are safe. And young women like Charlotte Kirby are left distraught and confused when men deliberately walk in on her. And this is by no means an isolated incident. Primark have changed their policy from unisex changing rooms to unisex and “women only”. But for Primark, a woman is anyone who says they are – because “all women” is the new-speak for “women and men-who-say-they-are-women”. So not women only changing, then. Other big names – including Marks and Spencer, Next, Zara and John Lewis – operate the same policy, and allow men who “identify as women” to use women’s facilities. Our Christmas Campaign will raise awareness of this issue. Women deserve to know the truth; that these retailers do not take their statutory responsibility for provide safety, dignity and privacy for women seriously.
Here's a link to the original page: https://www.womensrights.network/all-i-want-for-christmas
While the Conservatives were choosing a new leader we took the opportunity to exercise our electoral muscle to make sure they chose an openly gender critical candidate who would #RespectMySex.
We urged everyone to write to their MP them urging them to put women and children front and centre when deciding who to back in the first two voting rounds.
We provided our usual easy click system to facilitate this.
This campaign is now closed.
The Ministry of Justice Youth Custody Service (YCS) confirms it will introduce a policy in the autumn that would allow children aged 10 to 18 in secure children’s homes and secure training centres to declare themselves transgender and be placed in the “unit of acquired gender” so that they can “feel more comfortable expressing their transgender identity in a mixed environment rather than in a secure setting where they are only mixing with one gender.”
Boys aged 16 or 17 could declare themselves “transgender girls” and be placed on the same units as girls aged 13 and over.
Concerned members of the public have written to their MPs explaining why this presents a particular risk to children known to be especially troubled, impulsive and vulnerable - especially girls.
Girls entering the children and young people’s secure estate already tend to have multiple and complex difficulties, including high levels of mental health difficulties (generally resulting from prolonged and/or pervasive experiences of sexual abuse/adversity), significant self-harm risks and many are neuro-diverse.
The Ministry of Justice is not listening.
This campaign has now closed.
The Westminster government decided against reforming the Gender Recognition Act (GRA), but the Scottish government are pressing ahead. Although framed up as an “administrative change” that simply streamlines the process for changing the sex on a person’s birth certificate, it would implement self-declaration or “self-ID”, and amounts to the removal of vital safeguards with impacts for the whole of the UK as we explain here. The key changes are to remove the need for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria, to reduce the minimum age for applicants from 18 to 16, and to reduce the time an applicant must live in their chosen gender from 2 years to as little as 6 months.
If you can write your own letter, it will be more powerful than a reprinted campaign letter. If you can say how this change will affect you, that is more powerful again.
Download and adapt our template letter: Download Word Version | Download PDF Version
Primark is putting women at risk.
Women's Rights Network Response to Viral Video on Voyeurism.
Press Release 25th September 2022 Heather Binning of the Women’s Rights Network says, “Men have no place in women’s changing rooms. To state this is neither hateful nor transphobic, it is a simple truth. “The tearful video Charlotte Kirby has posted on social media illustrates so many of the reasons why we should all push back on gender identity ideology. “No woman should have to deal with men opening curtains as they change in a fitting room. For this to happen once is appalling, for it to happen twice during one shopping trip shows what a creeps’ charter mixed-sex changing rooms have become. “Primark cannot plead ignorance or inclusion. Women have repeatedly warned them that mixed-sex changing rooms are a problem. This latest example of voyeurism is just the most recent in a series of incidents reported in Primark stores.* “Primark and other high street retailers must start prioritising the safety, privacy and dignity of women and stop facilitating predatory men in the name of ‘inclusion’. “No woman should be put at risk in this way. No retailer should implement policies which leave a woman feeling so violated and frightened that staff had to escort her to her car. And no woman should ever feel the need to apologise for being victimised by predatory males. “The fact that this young woman has to preface her distressing disclosure with the caveat that she is ‘for’ mixed-sex changing rooms because ‘they make everyone feel included’ shows how far down this rabbit-hole of male entitlement we have fallen. “Women are making their disgust at Primark clear on social media, we encourage them to contact the retailer to let them know enough is enough, and to take their custom elsewhere if Primark does not reverse this dangerous policy.” * These incidents in Primark stores have been reported. How many others have not?
This campaign has now closed.
Thank you to everyone who sent an email to their MP
Stonewall is trying to resurrect the proposal for gender self-ID In 2018 the government undertook a consultation about reforming the Gender Recognition Act to change it to a system of self-declaration. The government looked at all the evidence and decided not to. Instead it has cut the fee from £140 to £5 and is working to digitalize the application process. Now Stonewall is trying to bring this proposal back. There has been a petition signed by 100,000 people, which means a “Westminster Hall” debate will take place on 21st February 2022, and it is calling on people to write to their MPs.
Watch the recording of the debate here.
This campaign has now closed.
Thank you to everyone who sent an email to their MP
Stonewall is trying to resurrect the proposal for gender self-ID In 2018 the government undertook a consultation about reforming the Gender Recognition Act to change it to a system of self-declaration. The government looked at all the evidence and decided not to. Instead it has cut the fee from £140 to £5 and is working to digitalize the application process. Now Stonewall is trying to bring this proposal back. There has been a petition signed by 100,000 people, which means a “Westminster Hall” debate will take place on 21st February 2022, and it is calling on people to write to their MPs.
Three brave activists launch 'most significant female movement since the Suffragettes' urging public demand EVERY politician standing in next month's elections can answer that simple - and very direct - question
Can a woman have a penis?
A simple question, you might imagine.
But not, it seems, for a flustered Sir Keir Starmer, who squirmed when asked just this in a radio interview this week.
And he's certainly not the only politician struggling with such matters. Anneliese Dodds, the shadow minister for women and equalities, recently had an issue defining precisely what a woman was (a clue, Anneliese, look in the mirror!), before reaching the conclusion 'it depends on what the context is'.
The Chancellor Rishi Sunak, too, in a recent radio interview was unable to say in his own words what a woman was. How worrying it is that politicians are now too cowardly to answer this most basic of questions, that they are unable to define what is, after all, half the population.
...Women have had enough.
So three of the country's largest campaign groups on women's rights — Women Uniting, Sex Matters and Women's Rights Network (WRN) — are mobilising with a new campaign: 'Respect my Sex if you want my X'.
We believe that politicians should know they can't expect our cross in the voting box if they do not acknowledge and protect women's sex-based rights.
We encouraged women to Take Action.
We wrote about Single Sex Wards and encouraged action.
We also shared The Honesty Questions.
IN a follow up campaing after the Conservative Leadership campaign, we encourages women to write all all MPs to "Respect My Sex".
This campaign is now closed.
There is a great deal of confusion around the Scottish Gender Recognition Reform Bill. Lucy Hunter Blackburn’s excellent letter to the Times clarifies how GRCs issued abroad are treated in the UK, and how this will change in Scotland if the Bill is given Royal Assent. Stonewall’s latest statement on this matter is at odds with their previous consultation responses and misrepresents the facts. This is a problem because they have initiated a letter writing campaign to MPs and many of the recipients still hold Stonewall in high regard. Our members emailed their MPs with the correct information outlined in this email template.
2 June 22 was the 75th anniversary of the Queen’s Coronation. Women's rights have changed significantly over that time. We showed how much we've gained, how much we've lost & what we stand to lose via a #SaveOurSpaces Campaign on Twitter.
We came up with some brilliant postcards using our iconic “Save Our Spaces” design and used them as a nifty reminder of how recent and fragile our sex-based tights are. Our Members sent them to MPs, Councillors, CEOs and more. We pinned them to noticeboards or strategically placed them in communal areas.
You can buy the postcards via our online shop.
The report, Transphobia As A Security Concern - The Dangers of Conflating Political Speech with Violent Insurrection, is produced by a collaboration between Fair Cop and The Women’s Rights Network.
We encouraged women to write to their MP to ensure that they saw the report.
Maya Forstater was suspended from Twitter after mass-reporting relating to her tweets about child-safeguarding unless she deletes a tweet which was part of a thread about child safeguarding and the pressures against speaking up. Read Maya's Statement - This is not a culture war. It is a war on safeguarding to see how the corruption of safeguarding, by Queer Theory, and fear-driven overindulgence of anything justified as LGBTQIA+ inclusion, has been going on in plain sight for years.
The Womens Rights Network stands by Maya Forstater and all those who have been raising the alarm on Mermaids for at least the last 5 years. Maya has rightly raised safeguarding issues that Mermaids failed to see and rectify. Safeguarding of children & vulnerable young people must always be a priority. It is everyone's responsibility to raise concerns. #SafeguardingFirst #TwitterHatesSafeguarding
Read WRN's blogs on safeguarding:
You can find more articles on our Women's Words blog page.
Read about others censored for raising safeguarding concerns:
We are not aligned to any political party - we are women of all political persuasions and none. Our position is "Respect My Sex" - we support candidates who understand the rights and needs of women, regardless of party. Here are some of our previous campaigns (in alphabetical order)...