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We explain why trans women and girls are being excluded from Girlguiding, the Women's Institute, and the Labour Women's Conference, amongst other spaces, following the FWS Supreme Court ruling, why this is not legally inevitable, and how women can challenge this blanket trans exclusion.
You may have recently caught a news article, chatted with a friend, or gone along to your local gym, club or social group only to discover that – for some reason – trans adults and children are no longer allowed in certain services and spaces. You may have seen the recent decisions by Girlguiding and the Women’s Institute (WI) to no longer accept trans women or girls in their membership, or the announcement from Labour that trans women will be barred from the main hall and denied voting rights at the upcoming Women’s Conference.
Many of you have asked: What has led to this? How did we go from years of successful inclusion to sudden exclusion?
Before we dive in, it’s important to acknowledge the extreme hurt that these decisions have caused the community and to be clear: as a group of women working to raise awareness and compassion, we disagree fundamentally with policies of blanket trans exclusion.
Here’s what happened…
Earlier this year (April 2025), a legal case was brought to the UK Supreme Court by campaign group For Women Scotland. This case focused on the definitions of the words “sex”, “man” and “woman” in the Equality Act 2010.
The Equality Act is the UK law that protects people from discrimination. It lists protected characteristics that you can not be discriminated against for – things like race, disability, age, religion, sex and sexual orientation. Transgender people are protected in the Equality Act under the characteristic of “gender reassignment”. The Equality Act covers England, Scotland, and Wales.
For many years, it was understood that the term “sex” in the Equality Act included the legal gender recorded on a trans person’s Gender Recognition Certificate. It was also understood that trans people could access the “single-sex” services of their lived gender, unless a narrow exception applied (see paragraph 13.57).
In the Supreme Court case, For Women Scotland argued that the terms “sex”, “man” and “woman” in the Equality Act should be read as meaning “biological sex” only. They argued that the definition of these words should not include the legal or social gender of transgender people (people whose gender identity does not match their sex at birth).
For Women Scotland won their case.
Almost immediately, business, workplaces and organisations started asking what this meant for their policies. Could they still include trans members? Would they face legal challenges if they did?
It is important to know that there is still a great deal of legal uncertainty about how the UK Supreme Court ruling should be applied in practice. For example, two separate Employment Tribunal cases ruled that, even after the Supreme Court judgement, it was not inherently unlawful to include trans women in women’s workplace toilets or changing rooms. Despite this, certain groups are already pushing for mandatory, blanket bans of trans people from the services and organisations they have used safely and lawfully for decades.
The Women’s Institute, Girlguiding and the Labour Women’s Conference are three high-profile organisations that are now being forced to ban trans members. This is despite the fact that these organisations have welcomed and included trans women and girls for years – even decades. In doing so they have left the community feeling utterly devastated.
They didn’t create this situation – they’re responding to well-funded lobby campaigns and legal threats, which many other groups and services are now also facing.
Sadly, unless we speak up and push back, more exclusions are likely to follow.
Trans people already face high rates of discrimination, violence, and exclusion. In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, this has only worsened.
For trans women and trans men, trans girls and trans boys who’ve been participating in inclusive spaces for years without issue, this feels like being told they never really belonged. It’s not theoretical – not a “debate” or a “political opinion”. It’s about real people losing real community, as well as real rights and protections.
We know some women worry about safety in women’s spaces. Those concerns are understandable – women have genuine reasons to be vigilant based on lived experience.
However, the evidence shows that including trans women in women’s spaces and services is not a problem. Instead, policies of mandatory exclusion are harmful to everyone, whether trans or not, because in practice, such segregation would likely end up being based on “appearance” – in other words, whether you look masculine or feminine enough.
Excluding trans women and girls also doesn’t address the reality that the real threats to women and girls come from men who abuse their power. Mandatory trans exclusion shifts attention away from the actual patterns of harm, and in reality does nothing to protect anyone’s comfort or safety, privacy or dignity.
Understanding how we got here helps us see what needs to change. This isn’t inevitable – it’s the result of specific legal and political decisions that can be challenged.
If you would like to add your voice to the cause, here are some suggestions of things you can do:
Trans people losing access to services and community groups isn’t a legal necessity – it’s a choice being made in response to targeted pressure. We can choose differently.
If you want to understand more or stay updated keep an eye on our blog and follow us on social media at @NIONWomen. The more women who understand what’s happening, the harder our collective voice will be to ignore.