Women participate less at conferences, even if gender-balanced – study | Gender | The Guardian

Women are less likely to participate in proceedings at medical and scientific conferences, even with gender-balanced delegates, although simple interventions in conference design sparked a significant improvement in female inclusion, a study has found.

Over the last few decades, women have comprised roughly half of undergraduates in medicine, but remain distinctly underrepresented in medical faculty positions. This imbalance should have been corrected by now, said the study’s lead author, Dr Victoria Salem, an endocrinologist and senior research clinical fellow at Imperial College London.

Despite the even gender balance of delegates, the researchers found that women asked fewer and shorter questions at the 2017 conference – about one out of five questions or comments came from women. Questions from men lasted a combined total of two hours 54 minutes, versus 56 minutes for women over the course of both conferences.

For the 2018 conference, the researchers worked with the organisers to ensure more sessions with at least one woman in a chair position – and found that more female chairs resulted in an increase in female audience questions. In addition, if a woman was the first to ask a question, that increased the odds several times of subsequent audience contributions from a woman, according to the paper, published in the Lancet.

Source: Women participate less at conferences, even if gender-balanced – study | Gender | The Guardian

Doctor banned from practising in the UK prescribed 11-year-old puberty blockers, tribunal hears | Daily Mail Online

Dr Helen Webberley, who ran an unregistered online transgender clinic, is accused of failing to provide good clinical care to three patients.

  • Dr Helen Webberley co-founded business selling sex hormones from its website
  • The 52-year-old is currently suspended from practising as a doctor in Britain
  • She prescribed puberty blockers to children transitioning from female to male

Source: Doctor banned from practising in the UK prescribed 11-year-old puberty blockers, tribunal hears | Daily Mail Online

GPs face legal risks over hormones for teens

GPs have been warned they may face disciplinary action or law suits if they give cross-sex hormone drugs to transgender-identifying minors.

Source: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/gps-face-legal-risks-over-hormones-for-teens/news-story/48fb126c635851697eac089e416c8f6e

Transgender Sexual Offending: Context is ALL | Women Are Human

Many people are surprised to discover that despite an approximately 50:50 female-to-male in the total population, less than 5% of the total prison population is female.
In fact, this is a pattern repeated globally: the female prison population is always a small fraction of the total prison population, with this less than 5% figure consistent across settled western democracies such as western countries of the European Union and the U.S. and countries like Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
This difference between female and male criminal offending is even more stark when it comes to prisoners serving sentences for one or more sexual offences. In fact, at no point in the two decades since 2001 has the percentage of male sexual offenders dropped below 99%. This stark sex differential in sexual offender is the same in the U.S. and other comparable countries, notably Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the Republic of Ireland and the Nordic five (made up of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Iceland).

Source: Transgender Sexual Offending: Context is ALL | Women Are Human

MP Joanna Cherry blames ‘irresponsible’ SNP for abuse and demands apology | HeraldScotland

Grant Karte was today ordered not to contact Ms Cherry for five years, given a supervised community payback order for 15 months and ordered to do 160 hours of unpaid work after sending the MP threats on Twitter.

The MP for Edinburgh South West said: “Earlier on the same day I had been sacked from the SNP Westminster frontbench after senior SNP politicians, members of the SNP NEC and staff employed by the party had wrongly accused me of transphobia, simply because I had spoken up to defend the rights of women and girls and the right to free speech.”

She said their “irresponsible accusations put a target on my back” and that it was “wholly foreseeable that further abuse and threats might be elicited, as in fact happened.”.

She added: “The recent Employment Appeal Tribunal judgement in the case of Forstater v CGD Europe has made it quite clear that my beliefs as a gender critical feminist are protected under the Act. I also share the protected characteristics of sex and sexual orientation.”

Ms Cherry also reiterated that she would continue to defend “the rights of women and girls, the rights of lesbians to be same-sex attracted and the right to freedom of speech” and said it was “not transphobic”, adding: “I will continue to do so despite the attempts to silence me.”

Source: MP Joanna Cherry blames ‘irresponsible’ SNP for abuse and demands apology | HeraldScotland

ABC’s Christian Porter defence to remain suppressed

The ABC’s defence to the Christian Porter case will not be publicly available, after a judge agreed 27 pages should be removed from the court file.

The MP sued the ABC over a February 26 article about a now-deceased woman’s claim he had raped her decades earlier. He denies the allegation.

Source: ABC’s Christian Porter defence to remain suppressed

EXPOSED: City of Sydney evicts legal service for vulnerable women and girls for holding biological sex matters | The Spectator Australia

You would think a city council trying to axe a women’s legal service for its politics would be one of the biggest stories in the country. Yet the fate of an organisation helping women and girls affected by domestic and sexual violence in Sydney has barely touched mainstream media. 

Trans people deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, but so do women and girls. Many women are greatly troubled by biological males accessing single-sex female spaces (such as shelters, prisons, bathrooms), the unfair and unsafe participation of trans athletes in women’s sport, the medical transitioning of children (who are disproportionately teenage girls), and the silencing and harassment of women who speak out about these things.   

Moreover, as FLC explained to the Council – the published material is critical of aggressive trans activism, not trans people generally, an increasing number of whom share its concerns; FLC is supportive of gender nonconforming behaviour and strongly opposes disrespectful and cruel treatment of others; and the material does not breach anti-discrimination legislation, as it was posted “reasonably and in good faith” for “purposes in the public interest”. 

Nevertheless, the Council was unyielding in imposing unreasonable censorship restrictions on FLC, which were justified neither by the terms of the accommodation grant nor any laws. 

The Council received numerous letters of support for the clinic (including one with over 700 signatures) rebuking the Council’s censorship of genuinely held concerns about the impact of harmful gender policies and practices on women’s sex-based rights and the welfare of children. But despite this flood of support –- which was not even acknowledged –- on 28 June 2021, the Council unanimously voted to revoke FLC’s grant and terminate its tenancy. 

Source: EXPOSED: City of Sydney evicts legal service for vulnerable women and girls for holding biological sex matters | The Spectator Australia

City of Sydney Council revoking legal clinic grant ‘a serious misuse of power’

Women’s Forum Australia CEO Rachael Wong says the City of Sydney Council removing funding from the Feminist Legal Clinic is a “serious misuse of power” it should be held accountable for. Ms Wong has been advocating on behalf of the Feminist Legal Clinic, a pro-bono service which provides legal assistance to disadvantaged women around Sydney, which had its City of Sydney Accommodation Grant revoked earlier this year. Ms Wong says it is “ironic in a sense”, because “what the clinic has been accused of is discrimination but that’s exactly what the council is doing in this situation”. “Quite frankly I don’t think it should be allowed to get away with punishing those it disagrees with,” she told Sky News host Chris Kenny.“I think it’s a very serious misuse of power, and that the council should be held accountable for that.”

Source: City of Sydney Council revoking legal clinic grant ‘a serious misuse of power’

Notorious baby killer among biological males granted transfers to women’s prisons | The Post Millennial

The California legislature passed a measure in July to house prison inmates according to their stated gender identity and not according to biological sex. The policy went into effect January 1, and since then, 261 inmates have requested transfers, nearly all of them biological males asking to be housed with women.

The death penalty is currently suspended in California. Hann requested cross-gender surgery in 2019, at the state’s expense, claiming to identify as a woman, and then asked to be moved to a women’s prison. Hann was moved to the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla in May 2020, and remains there still, as does the mother of the children Hann beat to death.

Source: Notorious baby killer among biological males granted transfers to women’s prisons | The Post Millennial

Should egg freezing be an employee benefit for lawyers? – Lawyers Weekly

New research from Monash University suggests that while employee-sponsored egg freezing could be a windfall for working women’s career options, there are important unintended outcomes to consider.

[W]hile some participants saw the potential for employer-sponsored egg freezing to increase and support women’s reproductive and career options, the researchers noted, “others were concerned it could pressure women to delay childbearing, reinforce the career versus family dichotomy and exacerbate existing inequities in access to assisted reproductive technologies.

Employer-sponsored egg freezing was introduced in the US in 2014 via Silicon Valley corporate giants Apple and Facebook, Ms Johnston noted, with around one in five large US companies having followed the lead of Apple and Facebook and now offer female employees financial support to access egg freezing, with predictions Australia could follow suit.

(ed: If you or someone you know have been triggered by the content of this article, please visit FINRAGE – https://www.finrrage.org/)

Source: Should egg freezing be an employee benefit for lawyers? – Lawyers Weekly