Sacrificing gender equality to appease extreme and sexist religious student groups

Last week we had the unedifying spectacle of the general secretary of the LSE Students Union - a self-proclaimed feminist - saying that she had "a lovely time" at a gender-segregated dinner put on by the LSESU Islamic Society. She found the whole event "comfortable and relaxed", and was appalled at the subsequent "Islamophobic attacks" on her relaxed attitude to sitting one side of a seven foot screen separating the sexes.

Chris Moos, at the Freethinker, demonstrates that, despite disclaimers to the contrary, the event was in fact in direct contravention of the guidance of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and the existing equality legislation.

The fact that LSE Students’ Union has condoned the discriminatory nature of this event, and that the LSE has been fully aware that gender segregation has been regularly occurring at their events aggravates this matter. Both the Students’ Union and the University have not only shown disregard for the rights and welfare of their students, but also for the Equality Act 2010.

It thus does not take a lot of legal expertise to see LSE is in clear breach of equality legislation.

As I have argued before, this is not a surprise. Universities around the country are breaking the law, sacrificing gender equality in order to appease the demands of increasingly extreme and sexist religious student groups. Will it take homosexuals or the non-religious to disappear behind seven foot separation walls for universities to understand that as much as racial equality, gender equality is a basic human right?

Tehmina Kazi, Director of British Muslims for a Secular Democracy and LSE alumni, is worried about this development:

I am saddened and appalled that our successors at the LSE seem to have prioritised cultural relativism above equality and human rights. Whether they realise it or not, they are doing a tremendous disservice to dissenters within minority religious communities.

We must be very clear: when it comes to university events that fall outside the (narrow) Equality Act exemptions, separate is never equal.

When will the LSE and their Students’ Union stop breaking equality legislation designed to protect students, and start listening to women like Tehmina?

Comments

[JimitheFox]

By the time my grand-daughters are of university age, university will not be a place for them. Jewish and female? They will need security guards

[Rob]

Islamists are a far more powerful ally for the Far Left against Western culture than women are, so women get thrown under the bus. It is pure power politics.