OPINION: Women. Back by popular demand.
- Apr 17
- 4 min read
April 15th 2025
Jan Rivers
Spokesperson Genspect
In news released today we now owe a debt of gratitude to Associate Health Minister Casey Costello for asking Health New Zealand to reinstate the words woman and women in healthcare.
What should have been a completely uncontroversial decision has become a leading new story today with articles and interviews across NZ media. The Morning Report story was republished in the NZ Herald and on One News and Radio New Zealand published another story at lunchtime. Only then when College of Midwives Chief Executive Alison Eddy was interviewed was there a voice from a sex-realist perspective even though there are half a dozen groups - Speak Up for Women, Mana Wāhine Kōrero, LAVA, The Women's Rights Party, Resist Gender Education and Genspect; who would have been well- qualified to comment.
My involvement with this issue has been to take a deep dive into the research that was behind the decision to rename women as “people with cervixes” and to demand pronouns of public servants. According to Health New Zealand these changes were made with no policy work whatsoever. This would have been a bit like the decision to create an inclusive definition of women by our Ministry of Women – no consultation, evidence, policy development, risk mitigation or even an announcement!!! But that is not actually true. A year ago the department put out a draft policy on gender inclusion to the union movement which argues that language be “inclusive” and that managers take action with staff who do not comply. Its current status is unknown.
I’ve looked at the research that was done to include women who identify as men (or as non-binary) in peri-natal care too. It was of very poor quality and I have examined it closely. The Trans Pregnancy Care Project cost $180,000, and argued that it showed what transgender “pregnant and birthing whānau wanted”. It was led by non-binary academic and former midwife George Parker and former MP Elizabeth Kerekere was an advisor The authors did not mention they had to radically alter the criteria for participation , to find an adequate number of trans people who had been mothers.
The initial project proposed to interview 15 to 20 transgender and non-binary people who had been pregnant. The time period since pregnancy was doubled from three to six years to find 11 and it appears that at least one interviewee also had an advisory role within the project team, raising concerns about proper process. To find enough participants women who were trying to get pregnant were included and transgender women (transgender identified males who can never of course never be pregnant) were also interviewed although though neither group were eligible in the published scope.
I have long suspected that for some women non-binary is nothing more than a convenient and trendy cultural label – and this may have applied to some of the interviewees – very few of them “identified” as transgender but rather as other terms such as “genderqueer” or “takatāpui”.
The journal article describing this research used extreme language like eugenics, rather than convincing argument, to make the case for change. Trans people, were ‘strangers’ to the system and were “totally erased” by it. Participants used their own ‘lived experience’ which was then parsed through the ‘emerging field of transgender epistemology’ – meaning the world as viewed by transgender people. The danger that, with transgender participants and researchers, and a transgender framing, the results would lack balance and perspective was not considered. Meanwhile the article was silent on the actual health impacts for transgender identified mothers and their babies. These are significant such as the effect of having had mastectomies on feeding and nurturing infants or the impact of high levels of testosterone during pregnancy.
The project’s final report makes recommendations that would see women and sex-based language completely removed from midwifery practice. Meanwhile every woman would have to be asked about her gender identity and preferred pronouns, and have to endure being called a ‘pregnancy’ or a ‘person with a uterus’ or a person with a cervix (as the Te Whatu Ora website still states).
The project could not find enough women necessary for the research. How strong then, are its claims to override the interests of the almost 60,000 New Zealand women who give birth each year and for whom such changes are disadvantageous? The New Zealand Health Research Council are convinced of the need. In 2023 they gave a further $1.2 million grant the for ‘building system readiness for trans inclusive perinatal mental health services’ to run over three years. It may not prove popular with the sector. A similar project was recently defunded in the UK when it was found to be unworkable and it faced strong opposition from midwives.
Intending mothers, no matter how they identify, should be dealt with respectfully by their Lead Maternity Carers. Referring to pregnant transgender women as men, if that is what they believe will support them and their child should be a consideration in midwifery care. Such 1:1 support is equivalent to approaches to meet the specific needs of other groups of mothers such as lesbians, those with disabilities or with little English. Providing professional empathy though does not, and cannot, demand that people must believe in gender theory.
Society at large, and its professions and policy makers, must not be enjoined into dogma that deviates from both science and from truth. According excessive status to non-binary and transgender “pregnant people” as the research proposed would see the entire midwifery system stripped of language about women and mothers.
To do that is to embed exclusivity in the heart of the health system for one very small and atypical group rather than making it inclusive for all.
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