Mick Hartley

Nicola Sturgeon is to host an event celebrating the historic struggles of women in science. Some people are not happy:

Women’s rights groups have reacted with fury after it emerged ‘biology-denier’ Nicola Sturgeon will front a panel celebrating women in science. The former First Minister is hosting a high-profile panel discussion on Scotland’s overlooked female pioneers at the First Women of Science Festival in Edinburgh on Thursday, April 2.According to organisers Edinburgh Science, Scotland’s past is “filled with amazing women who changed the scientific path of history forever”. But Sturgeon’s selection as host has drawn fierce criticism from leading women’s rights campaigners, who accuse her of “denying basic biology” and abandoning scientific reality.They claim the Glasgow Southside MSP was the key architect of the divisive gender reform push, attempting to permanently “change scientific reality and biology in favour of gender self-identification”. Clare Blom, co-founder of grassroots campaign group Women Won’t Wheesht, said Sturgeon’s role was “fundamentally incoherent”.She said: “It claims to honour women’s historic exclusion from science while platforming figures who refuse to define what a woman is. The Edinburgh Seven were excluded because they were female. Their struggle was based on biological reality….

Mary Howden, of the Women’s Rights Network Scotland, said: “It is deeply unfortunate, and frankly ironic, that an event celebrating the historic struggles of women in science – the Edinburgh Seven and all those who fought to be recognised in their own right – should be hosted by Nicola Sturgeon.”A woman who, to this day, cannot bring herself to state the biological reality that a double rapist is a man. A politician widely accused of putting ideology before the safety and rights of women and girls, and who has done more than most to undermine the very sex-based rights the Edinburgh Seven and generations of women fought for.”Ms Howden added: “The sting in the tale is all too clear. An evening supposedly honouring ‘first women’ and hidden female voices is being fronted by one of the most prominent deniers of biological sex in modern British politics.

Mary Howden, of the Women’s Rights Network Scotland, said: “It is deeply unfortunate, and frankly ironic, that an event celebrating the historic struggles of women in science – the Edinburgh Seven and all those who fought to be recognised in their own right – should be hosted by Nicola Sturgeon.”A woman who, to this day, cannot bring herself to state the biological reality that a double rapist is a man. A politician widely accused of putting ideology before the safety and rights of women and girls, and who has done more than most to undermine the very sex-based rights the Edinburgh Seven and generations of women fought for.”Ms Howden added: “The sting in the tale is all too clear. An evening supposedly honouring ‘first women’ and hidden female voices is being fronted by one of the most prominent deniers of biological sex in modern British politics.

“Pride in the progress made by women is rather soured when the host has spent years working to erase the legal and social recognition of women as a distinct sex class. One can only hope the Astronomer Royal and the other panellists focus on actual science rather than the fashionable fiction that now surrounds it.”

The Edinburgh Seven “were the first group of matriculated undergraduate female students at any British university. They began studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1869 and, although the Court of Session ruled that they should never have been admitted, and they did not graduate or qualify as doctors, the campaign they fought gained national attention and won them many supporters, including Charles Darwin. Their campaign put the demands of women for a university education on the national political agenda, and eventually resulted in the Medical Act 1876 that enabled women to be licensed to practise medicine.”

They didn’t identify as women: they were women.