United Kingdom and Northern Ireland

The Sexual Offences (Northern Ireland) Order 2008 established rape as a statutory offence in place of the common law crime. Only a person with a penis can commit rape (Art. 5). All of the other sexual offences criminalize non-consensual acts (assault by penetration, sexual assault, and causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent) that could be committed by women and gender-neutral persons, but the law uses only male pronouns to refer to the perpetrator (Arts. 6-8).

The Sexual Offences Act Chapter 42 was enacted to introduce new provisions in relation to sexual offences, their prevention and the protection of children from harm from other sexual acts. Part 1 makes new provision about sexual offences. It covers the non-consensual offences of rape, assault by penetration, sexual assault, and causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent. It defines “consent” and “sexual” and sets out evidential and conclusive presumptions about consent. It covers child sex offences and offences involving an abuse of a position of trust towards a child.

Here, the Employment Appeal Tribunal upheld the appeal of the respondent employer and rejected a prior holding of the Edinburgh Employment Tribunal that found the respondent employer liable for having violated Section 1(3) of the Equal Pay Act for having given a male staff member a more favorable employment contract than two female co-workers and having done so without genuine, material, and sex-neutral factors accounting for this disparity.  The claimants in this appeal were two female employees of Scottish Enterprise, a non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government focused

The claimants in this appeal were two female employees of Scottish Enterprise, a non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government focused on economic development.  The women alleged that a male co-worker doing work of equal value had a more favorable employment contract, and that there were no genuine, material, and sex-neutral factors accounting for this disparity.  They alleged that their employer had violated Section 1(3) of the Equal Pay Act mandating the equal treatment of men and women in the same employment.  The Edinburgh Employment Tribunal found for the claim

The parties began a relationship and the defendant bought a house in her sole name in which the parties lived together as man and wife and had four children. The defendant, who throughout their time together earned more money than the claimant, and sometimes almost twice as much, made all the payments due under the mortgage and paid the household bills. The parties then separated and the claimant left the property while the defendant remained there with the children.

The Stalking Protection Act 2019 grants police the power to apply to Magistrates’ Courts for a new civil Stalking Protection Order (SPO).

Under common law in Northern Ireland, rape was an offense covering only vaginal intercourse committed by a man against a woman.  The Criminal Justice (Northern Ireland) Order 2003 provided a definition of rape as “any act of non-consensual intercourse by a man with a person.” 

The UK Parliament, in response to a the European Court of Human Right’s decision in Dudgeon v United Kingdom, extended the decriminalization of male homosexual acts (which took effect in 1967 for the rest of the UK) to Northern Ireland.  This order came into effect on December 8, 1982.

The regulations implementing these provisions were signed on December 19, 2020, and came into force on January 13, 2020. The regulations generally enable civil same-sex marriage and also non same-sex civil partnership.  Specifically, Part 2 allows same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland; allows consular and armed forces marriages overseas to be formed under Northern Ireland law; and treats as marriages in Northern Ireland same-sex marriages formed in other parts of the United Kingdom or abroad overseas which were previously treated as civil partnerships in Northern Ireland.

The Regulations came into force on 31 March 2020.  They regulate abortions in Northern Ireland.  They follow the repeal, by section 9 of the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc.) Act 2019, of sections 58 and 59 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861(1).