Towards the end of 2012, [in response to] the growing practice of gender segregation at public events in universities, Universities UK (UUK), the governing body of British universities, issued guidance which permitted gender segregation of women in university spaces in order to accommodate the religious beliefs of external speakers. The guidance presented in the form of a case study purported to provide advice in contexts in which the right to manifest religion clashes with gender equality.

Far from addressing the question of sex discrimination, the guidance merely legitimised gender apartheid. It took a campaign and threats of legal action by [Southall Black Sisters] before the UUK agreed to withdraw the guidance. We argued that the UUK’s guidance violated the equality and non-discrimination principles enshrined in the Public Sector Equality Duty under the Equality Act and other equalities and human rights legislation, themselves the product of long and hard campaigning by feminists, racial minorities and other marginalised groups in society. The withdrawal of the UUK guidance was followed by a formal investigation by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission which found the guidelines to be unlawful…

This blog will continue to keep an eye on attempts at gender segregation at universities.

In Britain, segregation of the sexes is viewed as a tool of the patriarchy. It traditionally reinforced a system in which women were deemed to be second best. For women to “voluntarily” opt to sit apart may be their religious right in a place of worship but in a public institution it undermines the hard-fought civic rights of women who, for generations, have battled for equality – and are still battling.

… [W]hat the controversy has again revealed is a profound concern about interpretations of Islam that conflict with a modern civil liberties agenda. Further, political correctness, sensitivity to charges of Islamophobia and commercial considerations (it has been suggested that segregated meetings appeal to overseas Muslim students vital for university finances) block discussions about what should and shouldn’t be inviolate in British society.

Well, thanks to the Orwellian language of separate but equal in the (now-withdrawn) Universities UK document, discussion is entirely unblocked. For years now, in a semi-underground way, women at some British universities have been treated like dogs. UUK, in seeking to normalize this treatment, instead made it very, very public. And when a practice as ugly as this one becomes public, that’s all it takes. Decent people will put a stop to it.

Yes, well, the Telegraph just a few minutes ago reported that the “backlash” against sanctioned sex segregation in British universities is getting rather intense. Opponents to enforced segregation (which turns out to be almost everyone who has weighed in, except, of course, the suddenly very very quiet people at Universities UK) are going to

send … teams to meetings and use the kind of techniques that were pioneered in countries like the US and South Africa in terms of black segregation.

…The prospect of groups deliberately provoking the organisers of gender segregated events, raising the prospect of tempers flaring, will be a matter of concern for vice-chancellors whose guidelines were intended to defuse tensions rather than enflame them.

It’s easy for the vice-chancellors to get a glimpse of what fun awaits. They need only Google Beit Shemesh.

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More commentary.

The petition calling for the rescinding of a Universities UK document permitting sex segregation in British universities is heating up the airwaves, having in only a couple of days attracted almost seven thousand signatures.

Manfredi La Manna, an economist at the University of St Andrews, writes to the vice-chancellors of Scottish universities:

[M]ake a stand for Scottish universities and state unequivocally that the abhorrent guidance on external speakers issued recently by [UK Universities] does not apply to Scottish
 universities.

The document mandates any British university to accede unconditionally to the conditions imposed by any external speaker who demands a gender segregated audience.

Indeed, in the Orwellian newspeak language of the UUK document, it is the “imposition” of an “unsegregated” area contravening the “genuinely held religious belief” of the speaker demanding segregation that British universities should oppose so that the “freedom of speech of the religious group or speaker is not curtailed unlawfully”.

Do you really want your female students to be treated as sex 
objects and second-class citizens and to be marshalled into special female-only pens so that the 
“genuinely held religious belief” of external speakers is not 
challenged? Would you have 
acceded to the demand for race segregated audiences by the Dutch Reformed Church (before it apologised for its role in propping up apartheid)?

La Manna is quite right to note the Orwellian newspeak by which, as women are herded into pens, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.

After pointing out that the document is “horrible,” “wretched,” and “stupid,” Charles Crawford goes on to sketch a non-disgraceful policy.

[For] an open event no segregation along gender or other lines is acceptable…

As with all grotesque illiberal eruptions, the UUK document is in fact bolstering freedom of speech by mobilizing people against its vileness. Sometimes people need to be reminded of the democratic basics. Fools like the authors of this document provide reminders.

… sexual apartheid.

Lise Ravary, in the Montreal Gazette, weighing in on the hijab thing, reminds us that there are important differences between French and English Canada.

In 2016, a developer wanted to build up to 80 homes on the South Shore of Montreal intended specifically for Muslims. He had even specified that women should dress modestly when outside their home. Pressure from all sides, even the local imam, quickly put an end to that. A separate religious neighbourhood would be heretical to Quebecers.

But in English Canada, it seems, most people don’t … have a problem when public schools close their cafeterias for prayers, with the sexes segregated and girls relegated to the back of the room. I can’t understand why such nonsense is tolerated.

Recall what happened in a British university a few years ago when an Islamic student group set up separate seating areas (women in back, and keep quiet) at an on-campus event. People always seem shocked when it turns out that – as in this latest case in Quebec – the public realm of secular egalitarian cultures actually matters to secular egalitarian people.

For the first installment of UD’s attempt to be reasonably self-aware about the fact that she’s a liberal, go here, and be sure to read the comments, which include a lengthy give and take between me and my old friend Rita Koganzon.

It’s clear from this blog’s long preoccupation with the genital mutilation of children, enforced veiling, enforced sex segregation, child marriage, various forms of erasure of women and images of women from the public realm, etc., etc., that an absolutely crucial liberal value, for UD, is gender equality.

One of her boyfriends at Northwestern University was an Iranian, from an extremely poor family, who scored so well on a national exam that he got one of the Shah’s special fellowships to study engineering at an American university.

His mother, he told me, was literally taken from playing with her dolls and married off to a man in his thirties. She was if I remember correctly nine years old.

Her husband’s sister could not have children, so this woman’s first child – she must have given birth at twelve or something – was simply taken from her and given to the sister.

I don’t remember the rest of her life story, but I remember my hopelessly naive shock at this tale, my hopeless effort to imagine this woman’s life in all its horror; and this of course was an early lesson for UD in the difference between liberal and non-liberal cultures. (Forget rule of law: “[T]here is no specific age limit for marriage in Iran and marriage is possible at any age.”) Culture (FGM) and religion (all the other stuff; including, in plenty of settings, FGM) continue, all over the world, to subject women to unspeakable cruelty as a routine part of life. We ignore most of it, since it’s so huge, but our attention will certainly be riveted to it at least for a little while as the Taliban begin reinterring Afghan women and girls.

And to be clear: None of this is to deny what Jordan Peterson rightly goes on about: Men have shitty lives too. We all have shitty lives, if you like – as Adam Gopnik, in his discussion of liberalism, points out:

If we got the best government imaginable, with national health care and with actually fair voting democratic voting procedures — we abolished the electoral college and Roe v. Wade was saved — we still would be stuck with the fact of mortality, with the misery of human life, with our inability to get everything we want.

Human life has a deep, deep sadness and the liberal project of reform can seem fatuous compared with the full enormity of human suffering and human unhappiness. That’s not a trivial observation; that’s deep in the richest kind of conservative political philosophy.

More tersely, there’s Adam Phillips:

The reason that there are so many depressed people is that life is so depressing for many people. It’s not a mystery.

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Now in all of this, one iteration of liberal culture has it that FGM etc is none of our business – that it is indeed one of the crowning glories of liberalism that our tolerance/moral relativism finds ways to normalize these behaviors. FGM is only a nick …no one will marry you if you’re not… nicked… It’s been part of these cultures forever… To be a liberal after all is to be neutral in regard to what constitutes a good life… Only a moral absolutist would judge, let alone militate against, FGM and assorted other women-only treats…

Yet — put aside the obvious cruelty of the FGM procedure – a cruelty to which you’d think morally serious people – and certainly liberals – would respond — wouldn’t you think that since equality is one of the primary liberal virtues, liberals would judge FGM to be, well, wrong?

Or recall my many posts in 2013 about the decision of the governing body of British universities that gender segregation at university events was fine. In the language of the Muslim student groups who held such events, the Sisters could sit in the back, behind a curtain, and be quiet, while the Brothers could sit in the front and make comments.

Another eminently admirable liberal decision, based on respect for diverse ways of life.

Only right away something interesting happened. This wasn’t some far-away degradation, like FGM or child marriage; this was happening next door to my residence hall! I could SEE this – could see women obediently walking through side doors marked BLACKS ONLY I mean WOMEN ONLY… And a HUGE fuss ensued and the liberally enlightened governing body first tried condescendingly lecturing people on their benighted colonialist myopic evil until absolutely everyone starting with the prime minister came down on them like a ton of bricks and they suddenly announced uh no we meant gender segregation at university events is unlawful.

So… liberalism seems to mean standing your ground when your national liberal values are directly attacked, which is great, only UD recognizes her liberalism as equally international in orientation, which means that unlike some people she thinks there are universal non-negotiable human rights/values, and that it’s perfectly okay – even commendable – to be appalled at – call them militant and even vicious illiberalisms – around the world, and to speak and act against them.

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So now let’s return to the story of the day – the EU court’s decision that under conditions of strict across the board religious neutrality, banning the hijab from the workplace might be okay. Might be. This decision is subject to all sorts of local review and approval. But that was the decision; and obviously the broader context is that one liberal European country after another is in various ways restricting the burqa and the hijab, and lots of other in no way liberal countries are also restricting various forms of female Islamic covering.

Clearly, banning certain religious forms of dress is far more questionable than banning sex segregation at university events. The latter takes a stand on behalf of gender equality in a context where such equality is obviously flouted; the former looks like illiberal bigotry against innocuous self-expression. (Marine Le Pen has called for a total ban on the hijab.) Liberal societies enshrine freedom of religion, and only an illiberal person would favor restrictions on religious symbols and apparel.

A practical problem has arisen, however. Some businesses are suffering serious losses, as people who object to the illiberal values of burqas and hijabs vote with their feet and take their business elsewhere. Are these people bigots?

Only some of them. I think some of them aren’t. Consider a woman who doesn’t want her five year old daughter to spend all day every day in the child care center with a woman whose clothing (hijab; loose full-body robe) broadcasts her deep conviction that the public relationship of women and men must be one in which women hide themselves from men; that the proper public posture of women is extreme modesty; that God wants women to hide their bodies. Having grown up in a liberal, secular, culture, this woman wants her daughter to develop in the exact opposite direction: Bold open bodily – and every other form of – self-expression in a context of absolute equality with, and non-fear of, men. (When interviewed, veiled women often talk about how they feel less subject to male harassment – they seem to see sexual harassment as hard-wired in men – when covered.)

I can easily imagine that this woman would without a second thought vote for Muslim-background political candidates, have more assimilated Muslim friends, have no objections to the core Muslim creed, etc. But the profound gender inequality of female veiling (the whole issue would be much more interesting if Muslim men also veiled) is for her a bridge too far; it offends precisely the liberal values she cherishes. It overrides the liberal value of tolerance in this situation because it threatens to have a direct effect on the liberal formation of her child. As Ronan McCrea notes, “Most mainstream religions have teachings on matters such as gender and sexuality that people can legitimately find offensive.” To their liberal values. In a certain setting.

Official guidelines which endorse sex segregation at British universities have been declared potentially unlawful by Britain’s equality watchdog, The Telegraph can disclose.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) announced it will help re-write guidance, published by Universities UK (UUK) last month, which said Muslim societies and other groups were entitled to practice gender segregation at public meetings on campus.

Mark Hammond, the EHRC’s chief executive, said gender segregation was “not permissible” under equalities laws, adding that UUK’s guidance required clarification.

Fuck clarification. It requires getting its butt kicked.

Bravo to everyone who signed the petition, gathered in front of the offices of the yucky UUK, and just kept this thing at the front of the news in England.

“[I]n an academic meeting or in a lecture open to the public it is not, in the commission’s view, permissible to segregate by gender.”

… in front of the offices of hapless Universities UK, the organization that, in a recent document, told that country’s universities that they can enforce segregation of men and women at public, university-sponsored events.

The news clip starts with invited speaker Laurence Krauss [scroll down] expressing disgust, and leaving the room, when he scans his audience at a recent university-sponsored forum on religion and realizes he’s been tricked into appearing at a separate but equal event. The clip continues with coverage of yesterday’s well-attended demonstration in front of UUK’s offices.

Krauss’s disgust and exit were spontaneous, the instinctive reactions of a decent human being to indecency. The various forms of protest at sanctioned gender apartheid in British universities – a petition, the demonstration – are planned, organized responses. As long as both forms of response continue to be expressed – instinctive disgust on which one is willing to act, and considered political strategies – democracy will win through.

More and more people are paying attention to those complicit with the silencing of women in British universities. See my posts here and here. Now Sarah Khan lends her voice.

Universities UK’s new published guidelines suggest side to side segregated seating is acceptable as “both men and women are being treated equally” and therefore women would not experience “less favourable treatment.”

Universities UK clearly cannot see the wood for the trees. The idea that both men and women are equally segregated and therefore treated equally is highly erroneous. Perhaps one could argue such a point if so many [campus Islamic groups] weren’t such patriarchal constructions; shaped, structured and led by men.

So let me spell it out for Universities UK. [S]egregation results in ‘less favourable treatment.’ It enables the unequal distribution of power between men and women, resulting in gender based discrimination and inequality. It manifests itself in few female speakers being invited to speak to a mixed audience, limited decision making powers by female members, and how there has never been a female president of an Isoc.

Segregation perpetuates discriminatory social norms and practices, shaping male attitudes about women and restricting the decisions and choices of women. By allowing gender segregation, Universities UK are complicit in the gender inequality being perpetuated by Isocs; [Universities UK’s approval of gender segregation] will only make it easier for Isocs to treat socially unequal groups, in this case women, even more unequally.

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Preacher Haitham al Haddad, who has spoken in approximately twenty Isocs in the last two years, argues that women should withdraw from public life. [He hopes] to disempower them by denying them their economic self-determination and to silence them through their invisibility…

Universities UK are not only giving speakers like him a green light to say these things but are also preparing the gender segregated seating for him to say it.

Watch Britain’s universities carefully. They will show you how to hand your school over to vile demagogues.

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Nice comment on IHE‘s coverage:

This is such a step backward in civil and human rights, I am almost rendered speechless. “Separate but Equal” worked so well during the Jim Crow South or during Apartheid. Good on you, Britain, for working to bring this long-discredited viewpoint back into vogue…

If your university is inviting speakers who demand gender-segregation, perhaps you should start seriously looking at the sanity of those who bring these speakers [to] campus…

Brits are protesting gender segregated events at their universities. In response, universities which have in the past allowed it to happen are beginning to ban the groups that do it.

If efforts to maintain equality at British universities are annoying to you, be aware that Australian universities are much friendlier to the stash-the-girls-in-the-back boys.

At an April 13 lecture on Islamic Jihad in Syria, signs directed “sisters” to the back of the theatre, and “brothers” to the front.

Gender segregation was also encouraged at an information session for prospective Australian Islamic Peace Conference volunteers held by the Islamic Research and Educational Academy at the university’s Public Lecture Theatre on March 10.

The university said the events were held by external organisations and it would not intervene to prevent the practice.

Yes, in Australia, universities don’t stand for anything, so you can bring your organization and do anything you want on that nation’s campuses. As long as you’re “external.”

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Someone managed to dig up some old gender studies professor to squawk about this.

University of Melbourne gender politics professor Sheila Jeffreys said she was shocked to learn that this “form of subordinating women” was taking place on an Australian university campus.

“There needs to be great outrage about this,” Professor Jeffreys said. “It is a Rosa Parks moment . . . Making women sit at the back in lecture theatres is sexual apartheid. This is a new practice in Australia, whereas apartheid against black Americans was an old practice. But it should be challenged strongly so that it goes no further.

“Religious ideas that so blatantly make women into second-class citizens are not worthy of respect. They should not be allowed to undermine people’s justified rejection of discrimination against women.”

Who in the hell allowed that woman to speak?

… notes Huma Yusuf in the New York Times, and indeed this blog has followed with amazement the mandatory gender segregation at a number of university-sponsored events in British universities.

In February, during the annual Pakistan Future Leaders’ Conference at Oxford, which brought together student delegates from more than 40 colleges, a Pakistani friend who is on a fellowship at the university joined a panel discussion on Pakistani politics. During the debate, he was taken aback to hear some participants champion the role of religion in state affairs and call for the revival of an Islamic caliphate. “The only revolution that can work is one brought through Shariah law,” one participant said. Another speaker dismissed the Pakistani Constitution as “human law” that is irrelevant in the face of “divine law.”

It took my friend some time, and several conversations with pro-democracy students who recognized them, to understand that his fellow speakers were [radical Islamic] Hizb-ut-Tahrir activists. “Their interventions were meticulously planned and very disconcerting,” he told me. “It’s clear that they’re very committed to their cause.”

British universities are being remarkably indolent about dealing with the problem. Or maybe they don’t think it’s a problem.

Making women sit in the back of public lectures and telling them to shut up… It’s become this adorable British university custom, right up there with punting on the Thames and afternoon tea at the cricket ground.

This post’s headline describes a 2009 event at City University London; University College London’s recent eagerness to share in the tradition has caused a bit of static, but UD is sure the university will work it out. The university surely doesn’t want a repeat of the unseemly events of March 9, when invited speaker Lawrence Krauss found people refusing segregation getting thrown out of the room altogether (they don’t yet understand the tradition – these things take time) upsetting (Krauss too needs time).

[He] said he would not speak at an event that was segregated and walked out to cheers and boos from the audience. An organiser pursued him and said segregation would be abandoned.

And they did abandon it! They suddenly let people sit where they wanted to.

When people cave that easily – some American atheist waltzes in and gets pissed off, and the organizers act, well, like a bunch of women – they make it harder for everyone else to make the case that stashing females in the backs of rooms and making them shut their faces is an affirmation of their dignity.

Either you hold your ground, or you make the world safer for infidels like Richard Dawkins.

“University College London is celebrated as an early haven of enlightened free thinking, the first university college in England to have a secular foundation, and the first to admit men and women on equal terms. Heads should roll,” [Dawkins] wrote on his website.

They won’t roll. UD is sure, given what’s going on at other British universities, that this one will find ways to sustain gender apartheid on its grounds.

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UD thanks Howell.

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Update: A letter an attendee wrote to the university:

I am writing to inform you that I was shocked about the manner in which the event was carried out yesterday.

I would urge to look into the matter and come back to me as soon as possible.

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Another attendee. I was wrong, up there, about organizers desegregating the event.

Christopher Roche said: “It was clear that the segregation was still in effect [after organizers said they would stop segregating] as when I sat in the same aisle as female attendees I was immediately instructed by security to exit the theatre. I was taken to a small room with IERA security staff and an organiser named Mohammad who told me that the policy was actually given to IERA by UCL.

“The organisers should also apologise for their appalling behaviour if they want to hold any more events on campuses in the future.”