Maman Poulet | Clucking away crookedly through media, politics and life

Changing Gender for financial gain?

December 1st, 2009 · 9 Comments · Equality, Green Party, Irish Politics

Some in Fianna Fáil think that those who wish to have their gender legally recognised as the gender they acquire do so for financial gain or to fiddle welfare systems.

This is news to me! I don’t get how someone who changes their gender is better off financially (particularly as women still only earn 4/5ths of the income earned by men.) I don’t see how there can be better welfare entitlements based on gender either unless it’s to be recognised as an opposite sex couple?

Also who would put themselves through acquiring a new gender to do so?

In a report on the governments intentions to introduce legislation next year on the matter as per the Programme for Government, it was stated that

‘Fianna Fáil were concerned that people would seek to change their gender for reasons other than psychological or medical, such as welfare or other entitlements.’

Mary Hanafin has stated that the work on the issue will begin in the ‘immediate future’ and it’s something that the Green Party fought to have included in the renewed programme for government.  Indeed the failure of the government to legislate on the matter left Ireland in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights and only one of two countries in Europe to fail to allow people to change their birth certificates and other documents.
The Government is also dropping their appeal to the Foy case in their move to change the law.  Human Rights in Ireland has more on this.
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