THE GENDER RECOGNITION ACT: TEN YEARS ON. BY SANDRA HARRIS.

THE GENDER RECOGNITION ACT: TEN YEARS ON. BY SANDRA HARRIS. © On the fifteenth of July, 2015, the Irish Oireachtas passed the Gender Recognition Act. This meant that any adult in Ireland who wished to legally change gender could do so simply by filling out a form. I had a small child at the time and didn’t spend hours watching news and following the activities of government via the Oireachtas television channel as I do nowadays, but surely I couldn’t have missed something so important, an act of government which would impact all women’s lives in so significant a fashion? Anyone you ask about it will tell you that this was one of those ‘under the radar’ laws that didn’t receive a huge amount of debate on television. ‘Under the radar…?’ Why would it have been ‘under the radar?’ And why were the people whom it would ultimately impact the most- women- not asked their opinion in a country-wide referendum? Were we asked and I’d missed it, maybe, caught up as I was in motherho...