Women's Rights Network - WRN

To all the women of the world tonight, tomorrow and for years to come, we want to live in peace. To be equal in law, regarded as the whole persons we are, treated with dignity and respect as women, and to be safe from harm. To love our families, our friends, and to be loved. To enjoy our homes, our education and our work. Our thoughts are with all women living in fear, in distress, who are subjected to male violence, who suffer sexual violence. To all women who may feel without hope. We hear you all, we see you all. It is #NeverHerFault

@WRNScotland @ScotParl @clairebakermsp @SharonDowey_ @DrPamGosal @beirasplace @DrK_IngalaSmith @SelkieStitching Excellent work and huge thanks to those supporting such an important event 👏👏

Today we held a #MVAWG event at @ScotParl Thank you to @clairebakermsp and @SharonDowey_ for sponsoring it We heard from @DrPamGosal Lesley Johnston CEO @beirasplace Liz Curran #ScottishRapeCrisisAlliance @DrK_IngalaSmith @SelkieStitching whose Lost Women Banner is so powerful yet heartbreaking Sexual crimes against women have risen in Scotland #ScotlandsShame

This is how you do sport for girls. Single-sex. No ifs. No buts.

Good news for female football coaches as FIFA rules that teams at this year’s under-17s and under-20s Women's World Cup and Women's Champions Cup competitions MUST have at least one female on the coaching team. More job opportunities and career pathways can only be good news for the women’s game. Other sports… take note.

Great to hear WRN's Jane Sullivan in conversation with @JuliaHB1 on @TalkTV earlier, giving the cancellation of a boxing course for women in Bristol a good airing. It is scandalous that a course intended to benefit young women aged 16-25 was cancelled, rather than offend those who 'identify' as women by prohibiting their own attendance. Men should not be punching women - even if it is for 'sport'. We hope that King Charles is now aware of this and is taking urgent steps to reinstate the course - for women only. Perhaps Queen Camilla might have a word?

We had a great zoom meeting with @michaelpforan recently. Here he is explaining why there is no need to wait for the @EHRC to deliver bespoke guidance for each and every situation that may arise. Inexplicably however, organisations STILL drag their feet. Michael Foran is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Oxford and Tutorial Fellow at Keble College, specialising in public law, equality, and anti-discrimination law.

Women's Rights Network Leisure Centre investigations are here: 6/6 womensrights.network/wrn-reports. .

Mixed-sex changing rooms are a predator’s paradise. Our FOI investigations revealed that in one year there were 16 rapes, 80 sexual assaults and 65 acts of voyeurism across 257 leisure centres in England and Wales. We have data from Northern Ireland (just in) that reveals more than 80% of sexual crimes perpetrated in changing rooms occur in mixed-sex facilities. This confirms previous research that shows mixed-sex changing is a crime scene waiting to happen. This is a national scandal. Sport England has doggedly stuck to its ‘moving to inclusion’ mantra even though time and again this has proved to be ‘moving to inclusion of sexual predators’. Delegates at One Swim - ask the questions, and report back to us… Links to our leisure centre reports in the next post. 5/6

EXCLUSIVE: New Sport England guidance ignores risks of mixed-sex changing rooms @Sport_England revealed its new swimming pool design guidance to delegates at the One Swim England Summit in Birmingham today. The current guidance dates back to 2013 and is widely used by Councils and architects to justify building mixed-sex changing rooms for swimmers. Ideally, the new guidance would scrap the edict that mixed-sex is the preferred option for new pools (note to Sport England: preferred by predators not women). In reality (and we know this because we’ve had advance sight of the draft guidelines) Sport England is doubling down on its advice to build mixed-sex changing villages as the default. Only they’re not called mixed-sex changing rooms anymore, they’re rebranded ‘all-genders’ changing rooms … Let’s look at the draft guidance in a bit more detail... 1/6

RT @WRNScotland: It is good news that @PoliceScotland will now be recording biological and transgender status separately. It is astonishin…

The male boxer Imane Khelif is to fight a woman in Paris on 23rd April in his first boxing match since the Paris Olympics in 2024. Khelif’s opponent is the female French boxer Estelle Mossely who won gold at the Rio Olympics in 2016. In the professional game it appears there are no barriers to men punching women in the name of sport. Using a woman as a punchbag when you know her opponent is male is the lowest of the low. For shame.

@dabooboo38 @EtienneTheWolf 😊 womensrights.network/join-wrn

@WomensRightsNet @EtienneTheWolf I really need to get involved in WRN.

Children as young as 11 years old are being directed, by Sport England, to a website which discusses topics such as sending nude photos to a date, sex addiction and black market weed. Schoolchildren in Years 7 to 11 (age 11 to 16) all over England have been asked via their schools to take part in a survey to assess their sport and physical activity. The final page of the survey directs children struggling with their mental health to The Mix, a mental health charity website aimed at under-25s. @Sport_England prides itself on its stringent approach to safeguarding and yet this endorsement of The Mix for pre-teens has more red flags than an F1 circuit on a wet day. 🚩 The Mix is a website for under 25s, i.e. adults, and actively encourages users to discuss their problems online in the discussion forums. This puts children at risk of grooming, or worse, as they have contact with adults they do not know. 🚩Topics on the discussion boards include: the pros and cons of sending nude photos to a potential date, sex addiction, black market weed, and discussions of cocaine, speed and MDMA. There are also posts where users discussed their suicidal feelings and eating disorders. 🚩 The site has a rapid Exit button that takes users to the BBC weather page - this is designed to prevent parents seeing what their child is looking at on screen. WRN founder, Heather Binning, said: ‘We feel this a wholly inappropriate website to signpost on a Sport England survey sent to schoolchildren from the age of 11, and completely at odds with promoting an active lifestyle.’ In addition to putting children at risk, the survey introduces children to contested gender ideology by asking if they are a … boy, girl, other, or prefer not to say. We say children should simply be asked if they are a girl or a boy. Conflating sex and gender leads to poor data collection at best and causes confusion to young children. ‘Sport England should immediately withdraw this survey and rewrite the question to comply with the government-backed Sullivan Report. It should also withdraw its endorsement of The Mix website which exposes children to inappropriate content for their age and puts them at risk,’ says Heather. Sport England has been contacted for comment but so far it’s 🦗

We are heartened by the growing courage of young female students like @samikshassotd. The stifling of debate, and the oppression of those who understand reality and defend women’s rights on our campuses has been horrendous. The violent and sexual threats to @_ConnieShaw are appalling. University authorities must deal with this. It’s not enough for them to wring their hands and whine that the law prevents them from cancelling events. They must find a backbone and some leadership and stand up for debate - and condemn those who would suppress it.

The Chief Constable and the PCC of @gwentpolice must meet with @WRNWales without delay. We require that they urgently review and amend their unlawful policy. They can issue a fulsome apology to female officers and staff while they are at it. Over to you Chief Constable Hobrough and PCC Mudd @JaneMuddPCC. 5/5 @PoliceSEENUK

.@gwentpolice have been dogged by misogyny scandals. So their dreadfully contemptuous approach towards women is not a surprise. If the police refuse to follow the law of the land and are endorsing policies that are still unlawful, how on earth can they expect respect or compliance from others? 4/ thetimes.com/uk/article/how…

GWENT POLICE ARE BREAKING THE LAW A police force is openly admitting, 11 months after the Supreme Court judgment that they are continuing to allow men into women’s changing rooms and toilets. They are STILL telling their staff that this is an 'entitlement'. They are wrong. We’d like to know what the Chief Constable and PCC of @gwentpolice will do about this flagrant breach of the Workplace Regulations 1992. 1/