The Times- Nursing union ‘hounded out’ worker over trans research

Nursing union ‘hounded out’ worker over trans research

Lisa Mackenzie, a part-time policy officer for the Royal College of Nursing, was researching sex and gender identity

Ian Marland

Thursday June 24 2021, 12.01am BST, The Times

A worker at a nursing union claims she was forced to quit her job after being “hounded” by bosses over her research into trans rights.

Lisa Mackenzie was a part-time policy officer for the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) when, in a separate role outside her work, she began research into sex and gender identity.

Working with two other analysts, she looked into the implications of the Scottish government’s Census (Amendment) (Scotland) Bill, which sought to include two new, voluntary questions in the 2021 census: one on sexual orientation and another on gender identity. They concluded that the concepts of “sex” and “gender identity” were conflated and that data gathered in the census would not be robust.

The researchers prepared a draft paper on the issues for the Scottish Affairs journal, which was accepted for publication in spring 2019.

However, when some of the findings were presented at an event on women’s sex-based rights at Edinburgh University in June, there was a fierce backlash. The event attracted protests and prompted accusations that the authors were transphobic, which they deny.

One MSP who attended later remarked: “Never in more than 25 years of going to political meetings have I felt the intimidation that I felt then.”

Writing in a blog this week, Mackenzie said a complaint had likened the authors’ views to antisemitism. The row prompted her employer to investigate, even though her external work had been raised with her manager.

She detailed months of meetings with managers and the RCN governance team as the investigation proceeded, causing her extreme anxiety. She was eventually told the matter would not be progressed to disciplinary action but that she was to “enter discussion with my line manager about how to ‘manage’ my external work”. However, she lost faith in her employer’s treatment and left her job.

Writing on the Woman’s Place UK website, she described the “vague and intrusive process to ‘manage’ my external work” as “the most stressful experience of my 20-year plus working life . . . Many other women have had similar problems with their employers. I am deeply concerned that women are being harassed in their workplaces or hounded out of their jobs because of their views on women’s rights.”

An RCN spokesman said: “No one was investigated 

for political or private views. 

No further action was taken.”