A European thinktank has criticised a women’s health report authored by an Irish MEP over its inclusion of references to transgender healthcare and gender identity alongside women-specific health issues. The Athena Forum questioned why such issues were included within the report’s remit.
It comes as the report, authored by Fianna Fáil Billy Kelleheer, is to be voted on today.
Athena Forum has said in a new analysis that there is an inherent contradiction between materially based and identity-based approaches to health embedded in the text of the resolution.
Back in March, this publication covered how the draft European Parliament report prompted criticism from feminist figures, including former Green MEP Nuala Ahern, over language they argued blurs sex-based definitions in healthcare policy.
The report has attracted considerable criticism because its mission is to examine gender inequalities in health, but women say it is being used to push against biological sex differences, and being used as a “Trojan horse for gender ideology’.
The report was prepared by Kelleher in his role as rapporteur for the Parliament’s Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM), the 12-page document ostensibly seeks to address structural inequalities in healthcare through a gender-based and explicitly intersectional framework.
The vote takes place on the same day as President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen is to make her annual state of the Union Address.
Athena Forum said that while trans advocacy organisations ILGA-Europe and TGEU were provided input to the report, it seemed that no women’s organisations or those advocating for a sex-based approach to women’s health were consulted.
The European thinktank said on Wednesday that more than 100 amendments to the resolution were negotiated between political groups and incorporated into the resolution.
“But unfortunately those seeking greater terminological clarity and a separation of women’s health from transgender issues did not survive the process.”
The Athena Forum told Gript that it had written to all MEPs to draw their attention to what they see as a “failed opportunity to build a rigorous, evidence-based framework centred on women.”
“The resolution is undermined by mutually exclusive terms and concepts that make its own recommendations impossible to implement.”
Faika El-Nagashi, Director of Athena Forum told Gript that the resolution by Irish Rapporteur Kelleher was a “missed opportunity to finally address the chronic neglect of women’s specific health needs and the persistent inequalities between women and men in healthcare.”
“While much of the resolution takes a scientific, evidence-based approach to women’s health, that approach is fundamentally undermined by the introduction of identity-based language and concepts that are incompatible with the report’s own recommendations,” she said.
“For example, the resolution rightly stresses the importance of sex-disaggregated data for women’s health, yet in the same breath, it refers to “gender-diverse people” and highlights the underrepresentation of “non-binary people” in medical trials.
“It is like asking an engineer to build a bridge using the laws of physics while also accounting for biblical miracles in the calculations.
“By framing “trans-specific healthcare” as part of the scope of women’s health, the resolution becomes a vehicle for advancing unrelated EU policy on “legal gender recognition,” “transition,” and “conversion practices” related to gender identity.
“Ultimately, Kelleher’s report fails to deliver on a historic opportunity to correct decades of neglect in women’s healthcare.”