On April 16, 2025, the UK Supreme Court delivered a landmark ruling clarifying that the term woman in the UK Equality Act 2010 refers to female biological sex, not gender or transgender identity. The ruling of the court was unanimous. Behind this lies the dedicated and hard work of For Women Scotland, one of WoPAIs founding members, who brought the case to the UK’s supreme court.
This decision has wide-reaching implications for policies involving single-sex spaces and services across the UK, and it will have an international impact as well The Supreme Court ruling:
- Reasserts the legitimacy of sex-based rights of women and girls
- Defends the category of woman as a material category, and as such, a political class
- Pushes back against the erosion of female-only spaces
- Affirms that safeguarding and equality for women must be rooted in biological reality
Women’s Platform for Action International welcomes this ruling; it is a powerful recognition of a principle central to the CEDAW-convention: that women’s oppression is based on sex, and so must also our protections be. CEDAW affirms that “women’s role in procreation shall not be a basis for discrimination“ and that no woman or girl can be discriminated based on her sex – but still this happens to women and girls all over the globe, every day – simply because we are born as women. Women are murdered, mutilated, raped and discriminated – not because we feel like women, but because we are women. This is a material reality that no woman has the privilege to identify her way out of.
We were in a very difficult place in Scotland. We thought we were going to see the rights for women rolled back. And today the judges have said what we always believed to be the case. That women are protected by their biological sex, that sex is real, and that women can now feel safe that services and spaces designed for women are for women. We are enormously grateful to the supreme court for this ruling
– Susan Smith, For Women Scotland.
Background to the ruling
The case centred on whether the Scottish government could include trans-identified males with a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC)within its legal definition of “woman” for public board representation. The Court unanimously ruled that this interpretation was inconsistent with the UK Equality Act.
What consequences will the ruling have for women’s rights in the UK?
The ruling provides important legal clarity for organisations and service-providers that now have a firm legal foundation for defining women-only spaces based on biological sex. This applies to spaces such as domestic violence shelters, women’s prisons, changing rooms and public toilets and hospital wards.
Providers can make decisions with more confidence, reducing the risk of legal challenges under the Equality Act. This is important for all women but especially so for vulnerable groups of women such as incarcerated women who very often carry experiences of male violence. During the past couple of years there have been several cases of men convicted of acts of sexual violence against women demanding and being allowed transfer from men’s to women’s prisons because of self id.
This ruling is also crucial for lesbians who have been facing accusations of “exclusion”, “transphobia” and “discrimination” when they excluded men who identify as lesbians from their spaces, events and dating pool.
Another example of where women need to be protected is in hospitals – in Sweden for instance there have been several cases of women being raped in hospitals and psychiatric wards when they have been forced to share a room with a man. Women are more vulnerable simply because we are women and society therefore has to ensure safe spaces for women and girls.
Going forward the ruling is likely to influence future debates in the UK on how public bodies define sex in law, the boundaries between gender identity and sex-based rights and future reforms to the Equality Act. The Court’s ruling is a victory for women in the UK but also a powerful signal to the rest of the world and against the erosion of women’s boundaries and a crucial step in resisting the commodification or dissolution of womanhood. Women’s Platform for Action International will continue to fight for the sex based rights of women and girls all over the globe.
Read the full UK Supreme Court ruling: https://supremecourt.uk/uploads/uksc_2024_0042_judgment_aea6c48cee.pdf
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