Alba gives details of rights for women

ALEX Salmond’s Alba Party has launched a policy on women’s rights following a women’s conference over the weekend.

Former SNP MP Tasmina Ahmed Sheikh, who is running for Alba in Central Scotland, said the policy was what “women in Scotland have been waiting for” and “will speak to many women who feel their voices have been side-lined.”

The policy says Alba’s view is that “no single protected characteristic is more virtuous or more worthy of recognition and safeguarding than another. They are all fundamentally important, each on their own, and as a collective”.

It adds women “have the right to maintain their sex-based protections” in the Equality Act and include “female-only spaces such as changing rooms, hospital wards, sanitary and sleeping accommodation, refuges, hostels and prisons”.

The party has also said it “invites and will endorse a citizens’ assembly on how best to reform the Gender Recognition process in a respectful, sensitive and positive fashion.”

It comes after a long and heated debate over the Scottish Government’s proposals to reform the Gender Recognition Act.

Nicola Sturgeon previously committed to changing the act to make it easier for transgender people to self-identify as male or female, without having to go through invasive and humiliating medical assessments.

However, some campaigners say this threatens women’s rights, and could open up women’s spaces to sexual predators who are claiming they identify as female to gain access.

This has led to allegations of transphobia against those who do not support the reforms, which has, in turn, seen a rise in abuse of people on both sides of the debate.