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UCL Women’s Liberation SIG Spring Term 2021 – Callie H Burt
By UCL Women's Liberation, on 6 March 2021
‘Scrutinizing the US Equality Act: Context, Conflict, and Consequences’
Callie H Burt, Associate Professor, Georgia State University
The U.S. Equality Act, which amends civil rights statutes to explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, passed the House in February 2020 with unanimous Democratic support. In current form, the bill would institute sweeping changes that would prioritize in-the-moment gender self-ID over sex for ‘sex-based provisions’, no exceptions. I situate the act in its sociopolitical and historical context, discussing the current status of LGBT+ protections in the USA as well as the historical development of the Equality Act, first proposed in 1974 (albeit in much different form). I describe the specifics of bill passed in the House, including the prior rejection of Republican amendments to the bill to allow some sex-based provisions, and the conflict between sex-based and gender-identity-based rights. I conclude by discussing alternatives to the act that would provide federal non-discrimination protections to LGBT people without undermining sex-based rights and the protected nature of women’s provisions.
UCL Women’s Liberation are delighted to welcome Professor Callie H Burt.
Callie H. Burt is an associate professor in the Andrew Young School of Public Policy at Georgia State University, Atlanta, USA. Much of her research focuses on the developmental effects of social inequalities, especially the effects of social risk and protective factors in adolescence, from a biopsychosocial perspective. She has a longstanding research interest in sex differences and how these differences are shaped by gender as a social force, and the ways in which law and social policies reflect, reinscribe, or challenge these differences. She published a recent article on the US Equality Act in Feminist Criminology. More on Callie and her work can be found here: www.callieburt.org.
Date: 18 March 2021, 15.30-16.30 GMT
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://ucl.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYsdO2hqjkjGdAM8ATxnZKFyyi5QYUMaaAY
A recording is now available via UCL Media Central ‘Scrutinizing the US Equality Act: Conflict, Context and Consequences’ – Callie H. Burt https://mediacentral.ucl.ac.uk/Play/60775