Take action: A government consultation is open until Tuesday 5th May. Read our briefing and respond to the consultation.

The government has committed to creating a new national digital ID (BritCard) by the end of this Parliament, which it says will be useful, inclusive and trusted. It aims to enable better access to public and private services, saving time and effort, as well as better safeguarding of personal information and privacy, while reducing fraud and improving efficiency.

But the government does not plan to include sex on the BritCard, as it says sex “is not necessary for the intended purpose of the digital ID”.

We think this is a mistake. It is a cop-out that will leave individuals and service providers floundering and mired in conflict, instead of being able to simply and clearly verify a fact about people that is often needed.

Examples include:

• joining a dating service

• joining a single-sex association, such as Girlguiding or the Women’s Institute

• applying for a bursary, prize or award that is only for women

• joining a gym and using its ID to access male or female changing rooms

• registering for sport with a national governing body or sports team, or for competitions

• applying for a job in social care, policing, prisons or a single-sex service

• seeking to rent in a shared house, homestay, hall of residence or dormitory

• registering with a healthcare or social-care provider

• registering with a single-sex service such as a rape crisis centre or women’s refuge, or being referred between such services.

Currently people in the UK have no reliable way of verifying their sex. What is worse, apparently authoritative documents like passports, driving licences and health records contain inaccurate information that mixes sex and gender identity.

This doesn’t just affect the records of people who have changed their recorded sex. It affects everyone. It means that even if a person’s sex is accurately recorded on their passport, driver’s licence or NHS record, they cannot use the document to prove this, because there is no way of knowing whether their documents are or aren’t trustworthy.

Sex Matters does not take a general position on digital ID. We recognise that there are civil-liberties concerns about digital ID. But if a national digital ID is developed, we think it should include sex.

Sex should be included as a voluntary field

The development of a national digital identity is an opportunity to provide a simple, useful, inclusive and trusted way for people to verify their sex, which is needed in lots of everyday situations for eligibility for services (just as age, one of the most-cited use cases for digital ID, is).

Including sex on digital identity does not mean that people would always need to share this data.

It would not be difficult or disproportionate to include accurate sex data on digital ID as a voluntary field. For many people it will be possible to verify their sex easily by cross-referencing with the birth register, which is being digitised and which remains accurate. Making this data field voluntary allays privacy concerns for those who do not want this data on their digital ID.

Including sex on national digital ID would be simple, cost-effective, privacy-protecting and rights-respecting for everyone. It would not harm trans people’s rights. Failing to include sex on national digital ID will create difficulty, confusion, compliance problems and costs.

Whatever your view on digital ID, you can argue that if it exists it should include sex.

Take action

A government consultation, “Making public services work for you”, is open until Tuesday 5th May. It is important that lots of people and businesses respond to say that sex should be included on digital ID.

Please read the Sex Matters briefing explaining the issues and then respond to the consultation. We have produced guidance on answering the questions. It should take you about 10 minutes.

Respond to the consultation on digital ID

Yesterday was the deadline for the City of London Corporation to file its substantive defence on the lawfulness of its policy of allowing trans-identifying men into the women’s pond and showers on Hampstead Heath.

But a few days ago it made a last-ditch attempt to avoid making substantive legal arguments at all.

It applied to the court for the case to be “stayed” on the basis that its committees will soon reach a final decision on what admission arrangements to adopt following its consultation.

Previously it told the High Court a final decision “will be taken in March 2026”. It now says that timetable “was somewhat optimistic” but it is “confident” that a final decision will be made on 4th June 2026.

Sex Matters first wrote to the City of London on 17th June 2025, calling on it to reconsider its policy, which we say commits it to undertaking unlawful sex discrimination in several different directions. It refused. We filed our claim in August 2025 and asked for it to be expedited.

We want the court to hear what the City has to say as quickly as possible, so the City can get on with adopting a lawful policy and giving swimmers and staff confidence about who can go where.

The City has been dragging its feet using procedural arguments to try to avoid defending its policy. It said that our claim was too early and that it was too late, that there was no decision to challenge, that the claim shouldn’t be brought by way of judicial review and that Sex Matters didn’t have standing to bring it. Now that “the dog ate my homework” arguments have failed, the City of London says there is no time left for it to answer the substantive claim.

It argues that it should not have to defend the lawfulness of its current policy at all, since – it says – the issue will become “academic” once a final decision over the policy is made.

But the Administrative Court Guide makes clear that:

“A stay will not normally be permitted to enable the defendant to reconsider the decision under challenge in the claim.”

And in any case, unless the City of London abandons any variation on allowing trans-identifying men into the Ladies’ Pond, a judgment testing a version of the approach will serve a practical purpose.

It is now over a year since the Supreme Court judgment clarified the law, and we still haven’t heard a full account from the City of London of why it thinks that allowing some men into the women’s pond and showers while excluding others is lawful. It did say in July:

“The Corporation is expressly not seeking to rely on the [single and separate-sex service] exceptions under paragraphs 26–28 of Schedule 3 EqA.”

In September it said:

“One possible outcome of the review is that a trans-inclusive policy is, in the Corporation’s view, lawful positive action pursuant to s.158 EqA.”

In granting permission for our claim to go ahead, Lady Justice Elisabeth Laing called the City’s response to the substantive claim “unpersuasive”.

No wonder the City is still trying to wriggle out of making these arguments in court.

Meanwhile the weather is getting warmer and more women and girls are self-excluding, or risking being exposed to men as they use the open showers at the Ladies’ Pond. And staff and police officers on Hampstead Heath are being put at risk of engaging in discrimination and harassment in trying to implement the City of London’s policy.

Under Section 110 of the Equality Act, employees can avoid liability for contravening the act if they have relied on a statement by their employer that the action they were being told to undertake is lawful. The employer commits a criminal offence if it knowingly or recklessly makes a statement on this to its employees which is false or misleading in a material respect.

The City of London Corporation, and other duty bearers under the Equality Act, cannot keep hiding behind excuses. They are going to have to come out into the sunshine and explain why they think it is lawful to do what they are doing. The City has already wasted too much time and money trying to avoid doing the only responsible thing, which is to follow the law.

Campaign: Keep the women’s pond for women

For Women Scotland, Sex Matters and the lesbian intervenors outside 10 Downing Street – all photos © Belinda Jiao

This is the speech I made to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Women’s Rights on 15th April 2026

One year ago, the Supreme Court gave us clarity. We couldn’t have got a better, clearer judgment.

Every morning for the past year I have thought: “Thank you For Women Scotland… Thank you Lord Hodge, Lady Simler, Lady Rose…” And thank you to the lesbian intervenors. And to Ben Cooper KC, who made the arguments for Sex Matters in the Supreme Court.

Yet one year later it feels like nothing has changed.

Employers, service providers and the government are still pretending that it is difficult to understand that a man who feels sad about being a man, who puts on women’s clothing and make up, who may or may not get a sexual kick of out of this, who may or may not have parts of his body hormonally or surgically altered, is not a woman.

And women and men who articulate these facts in clear plain language are not bigots, or hateful or saying anything that shouldn’t be said.

But the truth is it is still dangerous to say these things. It is still the safer, smarter option to pretend not to know what everyone knows. We are pushing against the weight of institutions that have been corrupted from the inside out by an ideology that makes the truth unsayable.

So the lack of action following the Supreme Court judgment isn’t that surprising.

The law cannot do magic. A piece of paper cannot change people’s sex. And a Supreme Court judgment, however good and carefully reasoned, cannot immediately change institutions that have turned away from their purpose and systematically set women’s rights to zero.

It is a brilliant, clear judgment, and on 16th April last year some people thought the job was done. But we still have to win this the hard way – we have to win back language, institutions, incentives and hearts and minds. It’s not that people don’t agree with us, it’s that there’s still a climate of fear and the real danger from simply saying what the law has confirmed is right remains. And so many people seem to find it so easy to forget that women are full human beings.

For the anniversary of the judgment, Sex Matters has produced two publications. One is an easy-read version of the EHRC’s short update on single-sex facilities. The other is the One year later booklet, which tells the stories of 14 women and girls. It illustrates the harm that has been done and continues to be done by the misunderstanding of the Equality Act and the weaponisation of the law that is meant to protect women’s rights against women.

Some of the stories you will know, some you won’t. You will know the names of Sandie Peggie, Bethany Hutchison and the other Darlington nurses; other women have had to remain anonymous. There are longer stories on our website, and we will keep adding more stories of harm, until we don’t have to.

We sent the booklet to the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer with a letter from 26 women’s groups. We’ve also put it in the pigeonhole of every MP – including Bridget Phillipson, the Minister for Women and Equalities – and every working peer (we had them all enveloped and ready to go, and then when Phillipson made her announcement on the guidance, we had to rip open 1,200 envelopes and put in a new letter!)

The booklet includes the stories of women like Eleanor Frances, who joined the civil service to serve her country. When she raised concerns about policies she believed were unlawful and undermined civil service objectivity, she wasn’t heard – she was pushed out and her career derailed. The DCMS settled with her for six figures and said it would revise its policy. It hasn’t changed a thing.

And Charlotte Hawkins, an NHS paramedic trainer, who was asked to rewrite maternity guidance to remove clear biological language and replace it with vague terms. She spoke up. A few colleagues from the LGBT network started combing through her Facebook feed for gender-critical posts and she was suspended.

Then there are Bethany Hutchison and the other Darlington nurses, and Sandie Peggie. They simply didn’t want to undress in front of a male colleague in the women’s changing room. They asked for privacy – nothing more. They were called bigots and told to move.

One of the worst stories is from a woman we have called D. She is a service user of a mental-health charity; she qualified as a peer mentor to support other people with similar struggles. She has run a women’s group for several years.

After the Supreme Court judgment her local branch said it was going to change the name of the women’s and men’s groups in order to be inclusive. It told her that because they were only peer-support groups they couldn’t be single sex. It told her this is the law.

She asked us to help. So we wrote to the charity and explained the law. We said that it is perfectly lawful to have women-only groups and that it may well be indirect discrimination against women to let “trans women” into the group.

The charity took more than two months to reply to our letter. Then it came back and said that it was going to stop providing men’s and women’s peer support altogether and just have mixed-sex groups for people who want to talk about women’s mental health and men’s mental health.

Then someone reported D for being a bigot and a transphobe. Now she is being investigated and is barred from the offices of the service that has been a lifeline to her.

And all this happened after the Supreme Court judgment. All this happened because the charity responded to the judgment by trying to get around the spirit and letter of the law.

One thing that is really striking about the case studies in the booklet is that these are salt-of-the-earth women. Many work in frontline public services; others are seeking to do good within their communities. There are very few stories of women like Baroness Falkner who are at the top of their institutions and sticking their necks out. I want to pay tribute to Kishwer Falkner for her bravery and thank her for everything she has done.

In our letter to the minister for women and equalities, we said that her statement that “This government has always supported the protection of single-sex spaces based on biological sex” is a slap in the face to all the women whose stories we have told. It is a slap in the face to the women that stop me in the street and say thank you, and to the women who are in our inbox every day telling us that organisations are failing to follow the law.

We will keep bringing strategic legal cases, and working to shape public understanding. And we call on the government to show leadership – to lay the guidance, to withdraw the civil-service model policy that puts a legally incorrect definition of “discrimination” at the heart of the decision making, and to fix the data. Women have already waited far too long.

Maya Forstater

READ: The letter from 26 organisations and groups to the Prime Minister: why are women still waiting?

CATCH UP: Our response to Bridget Phillipson’s announcement that the EHRC code will be laid before Parliament in May

USE: The easy-read version of the EHRC’s update

READ MORE: The stories of each of the women in the One year later booklet

Podcast

In this week’s episode, filmed in London, Maya, Fiona and Helen discuss the week’s events marking the anniversary of the For Women Scotland judgment at the Supreme Court.

Celebrating in Parliament Square with supporters

In Parliament Square with Stephanie Davies-Arai of Transgender Trend

In front of the Supreme Court with the Darlington nurses, Jennifer Melle (furthest left) and Sandie Peggie (furthest right)

Thank you to everyone who turned up to mark For Women Scotland’s first anniversary!

Maya Forstater

In the news

Ahead of the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling, the news that the government plans to lay the ERHC code of practice after local elections was covered widely, including by Peter Walker and Libby Brooks for The Guardian, James Melley for BBC News, Martin Beckford for the Daily Mail and Daniel Martin for The Telegraph. Maya said that the government had found another excuse for delaying the guidance and that there appeared to have been negotiations regarding its content between the government and the EHRC. Maya was interviewed on the story by TalkTV by Julia Hartley-Brewer and Ian Collins, and Fiona was interviewed by Carole Walker on Times Radio.

On the eve of the anniversary, Sonia Sodha for The Times mentioned pressure from Sex Matters on the Cabinet Office to withdraw its unlawful model policy regarding trans-identifying employees, which applies across the civil service.

Reports on public bodies flouting the law dominated headlines on the day of the anniversary. David Churchill and Martin Beckford for the Daily Mail reported on widespread defiance within the NHS, police, local authorities and schools. Helen said that the failure of public bodies to adopt policies based on biological sex has caused untold harm to women and girls.

Martin Beckford for the Daily Mail and Daniel Martin for The Telegraph reported on research finding that more than a dozen councils across England have put forward motions criticising the Supreme Court ruling. Fiona asked why these councils are wasting time and resources like this.

Helen was interviewed by Georgina Mumford for Spiked TV to mark the anniversary of the ruling.

At the weekend, Maya was interviewed by Nana Akua on GB News on a blistering interview former EHRC chair Baroness Kishwer Falkner gave to Daniel Martin at The Telegraph on her experience of being at the helm of the equalities watchdog for five years.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting’s comments on the complications of implementing single-sex wards were covered by Martin Beckford for the Daily Mail. Maya said that Streeting’s focus on trans-identifying women was pure deflection and that accommodating them cannot be an excuse for delaying the exclusion of men from women-only wards. Helen was interviewed about the story on LBC by Nick Ferrari.

Earlier in the week, Fiona wrote for the Daily Express on the fallout from nurse Jennifer Melle’s case against the NHS for “misgendering”, saying that the NHS needs to cure itself of gender madness before more people are harmed.

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However, many organisations in both the public and private sector have ignored the ruling, often using the excuse that they are “waiting for guidance” from the equalities regulator. The civil service and local authorities continue to operate unlawful policies, both in their workplaces and in services they run.

In this episode, we look at the progress that has been made and the obstacles that have prevented it from being greater – as well as making some predictions about what will happen in the coming year.

Read our One Year Later booklet.

Read our easy-read version of the EHRC interim update.

Read Murray Blackburn Mackenzie’s new report on women’s charities and the Supreme Court ruling.

Videography: Belinda Jiao.

Subscribe now

On Thursday 7th May 2026, voters across Scotland, Wales and England will head to the polls in a major set of local and devolved elections. This includes 5,014 council seats across 136 English local authorities, six directly elected mayors in England, and the Scottish and Welsh parliamentary elections.

The work of local authorities touches us all. They run and commission services that usually include social care, leisure centres, education, libraries, community healthcare and public health. Most people will use a local-authority service at some time.

Local authorities are major employers. The Local Government Association reports that local authorities in England alone employ close to 600,000 people, not counting police or fire services (with which local authorities work closely). The total local authorities headcount in Wales is 140,000 and in Scotland it’s 260,000. That’s more than a million people directly affected by local-authority workplace policies. Other sources report up to two million employees across the UK.

Yet many local authorities have failed to amend their policies in line with the law. Council-run buildings generally offer toilets marked Male and Female, but most also have some form of “transitioning at work” policy that tells men who identify as women that they are entitled to use the women’s facilities, and vice versa. This affects both employees and visitors, who may be confronted by a male in the women’s toilets. Female employees may know this, and face the prospect every day; female visitors probably will not know until it happens.

The same is happening in swimming pools and leisure centres. The shocking case of Miranda Newsom, barred from Southwark Council’s leisure centres when she objected to a trans-identifying man in the women’s changing room of her local gym, shows how councils are still pandering to the men’s demands instead of complying with the law.

Traumatised women who flee male violence still face the prospect of a man being given a place in a refuge alongside them, because local authorities are claiming that the law is not clear and that trans-identifying men have to be treated as if they are women.

Many men are also uncomfortable with trans-identifying women being allowed into male spaces.

Local authorities are still “waiting for guidance”

In July 2025, Sex Matters wrote to every local authority in England, Scotland and Wales asking for assurance that they were complying with the law. We asked for assurances in four areas:

• Use of toilets and changing rooms at work. Every staff member needs to know that facilities are provided based on biological sex, as specified by the 1992 Workplace Regulations. Policing the facilities is not necessary. Disseminating a clear policy is.

• Toilets and changing rooms in buildings operated by the council which are used by the public, such as leisure centres, libraries and day centres. Staff and service users need to know the council policy, which cannot allow mixed-sex usage if a toilet or changing room is marked as Male/Female, Men/Women, or any other signage indicating sex.

• Transitioning at work. A statement to the effect that transitioning employees may use the facilities they feel comfortable with, or which match their gender identity, is likely to be unlawful, since it results in single-sex facilities becoming mixed-sex.

• Education. Schools and colleges should follow school premises regulations, and the Supreme Court has made clear that single-sex provision must be on the basis of biological sex.

The most common response was that they were “waiting for guidance”. Some said they were compliant with the law, but did not confirm what this meant – this gives no confidence. A few said they were reviewing, but refused to disclose any outcomes; one of these later said there was no policy update to share.

What must happen now

“Waiting for guidance” is a poor excuse, but it is about to disappear, now that the Minister for Women and Equalities has announced she will shortly present the updated Equality and Human Rights Commission’s code of practice for service providers to Parliament.

More broadly, councillors should be demanding that the officers of the council amend policies and ensure they are communicated and implemented in line with the law. No one should have been waiting to comply with the law. For the past year it has been perfectly clear.

What to ask on the doorstep

If there are local or devolved authority elections in your area, this gives you a chance to ask candidates on the doorstep and at hustings whether they will stand up for women’s rights and ensure that your local authority understands and respects the law. Ask them:

• Do they know about, understand and support the Supreme Court’s judgement that “man” and “woman” in the Equality Act mean biological sex?

• Will they ensure that all local-authority policies about facilities and services are clear that where services are provided separately for men and women this means biological sex?

• Will they withdraw unlawful “transitioning at work” policies and replace them with policies that make clear to trans-identifying council staff that they do not have the right to use opposite-sex facilities?

• Will they make sure that schools and colleges under local authority control follow the law and do not promote gender-identity ideology to vulnerable children?

The government has said today that it intends to finally lay the updated Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) code of practice for parliamentary approval after the local elections.

While the finalisation of the long-awaited guidance will be welcome, the law is already clear.

The EHRC published a simple update shortly after the Supreme Court ruled in For Women Scotland v the Scottish Ministers. The legal accuracy of the update was confirmed by the High Court on13th February 2026.

Sex Matters commissioned a specialist firm, which is used by government departments, local authorities and charities, to create an easy-read version of the EHRC update. Easy reads are often provided for important public documents, to make sure that everyone can participate in the democratic process, and can understand their rights and how to access services.

Read the Easy Read guidance.

Why does this matter?

The Equality Act protects everyone from unlawful discrimination and harassment. You shouldn’t have to be a lawyer or read guidance that is hundreds of pages long to make sense of it. We should all be able to know and understand our rights.

The act provides exceptions where sex discrimination is lawful in order to provide single-sex services, including everyday facilities where dignity and privacy matter, associations for a protected characteristic such as a gay club or a religious school, and positive action for an under-represented group such as women in politics.

The Minister for Women and Equalities, Bridget Phillipson, has made a statement to Parliament saying that she intends to lay the updated draft of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s code of  practice for services, public functions and associations before Parliament “as soon as practicable” after the local and devolved administration elections.

Then after 40 days, if neither house passes a resolution disapproving the draft, it will come into force.

The EHRC has admitted that it amended the guidance after the government provided it with “a narrow set of comments” on its previous draft.

Neither the minister nor the independent regulator is mandated to engage in this sort of delay and negotiation whereby the independent regulator edits its guidance to meet the preferences of the government.

Section 14(7) of the Equality Act 2006 says that before issuing a code the EHRC shall submit a draft to the Secretary of State, who shall either approve the draft and lay a copy before Parliament or give the EHRC written reasons why she does not approve it. The legal framework does not envisage this as a back-and-forth process of backroom negotiations between the government and the EHRC.

It is concerning that in her statement the Minister for Women and Equalities continues to focus on specialist service providers such as hospitals and women’s refuges and has still not made clear that ALL employers and service providers that offer single-sex or separate-sex facilities do so under the Equality Act, which recognises that men who have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment remain men, and do not have the right to access facilities provided for women and girls.

As our report One year later makes clear, the past year’s delay has caused serious harm to countless women. The statement that the government has “always supported the protection of single-sex spaces based on biological sex” is a slap in the face for women and girls who have faced harassment and hounding from jobs and services for calling for the law to be upheld.

Delaying laying the guidance till after local council and devolved administration elections is more unjustified procrastination.

The government has patted itself on the back, saying: “We are getting it right, showing leadership by implementing the clarity the Supreme Court ruling delivers.” Yet government departments up and down the country are still operating with unlawful policies that the previous head of the civil service refused to withdraw.

Next week it will be a year since the Supreme Court delivered its landmark judgment that the terms “man” and “woman” in the Equality Act 2010 refer to biological sex.

Clarifying the law was an incredible achievement, against all odds, for a grassroots group of women organising around their kitchen tables. It was the outcome of years of patient work, visionary courage and sheer bloody-mindedness by Trina Budge, Marion Calder and Susan Smith of For Women Scotland. With that ruling they achieved more in a single day than most people manage in a lifetime.

But while some organisations have got on with it and changed their policies (this week it was the Darts Regulation Authority), too many are still resisting or delaying.

I’m sure you’re as fed up as I am of hearing well-paid senior leaders of government departments, charities and regulators saying they are “waiting for guidance”. And I’m fed up with the government delaying publishing the guidance.

This week, with several other groups, we wrote to Keir Starmer about this delay. Along with the letter, we sent him a new report from Sex Matters that tells the stories of women who have experienced the consequences of the government’s failure to follow the law. It includes the stories of:

• a civil servant pushed out after raising concerns about policy compliance

• NHS staff disciplined for asserting sex-based boundaries

• women excluded from single-sex spaces, or penalised for objecting when those spaces are compromised

• athletes facing unfair competition and sanctioned for speaking out

• volunteers and carers deemed “unsuitable” for expressing mainstream opinions and safeguarding concerns.

We are grateful to everyone who told us their stories, and we will be collecting more.

On Saturday 11th April members of the Sex Matters team and friends will be reading out our letter to the Prime Minister in London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast and Sunderland as part of the #OneYearLater protests. We will be speaking alongside women telling their own stories about how the government’s failure to act is leading to harm.

If you can make it to one of the protests, we hope to see you there. If you would like to help us hand out Sex Matters flyers, make yourself known on the day!

Maya Forstater

Download the booklet

Write to your MP

FWS one year later

In this week’s episode, Maya and Helen talk about our latest publication, One year later, which tells the stories of individual women harmed by the failure to implement the Supreme Court ruling. A year after the landmark judgment, we are still hearing distressing stories of ordinary people being treated terribly simply because they want single-sex spaces, because they spoke up about safeguarding risks caused by ignoring the reality of sex or because they were open about their lack of belief in gender identity.

The law is clear: why are women waiting?

A year after the landmark Supreme Court judgment, we look at the harm caused to women and girls by the government’s failure to enforce it.

Read our new booklet now and share it on social media.

Read more

Write to your MP: why are we waiting?

Organisations are still prevaricating on single-sex spaces and the government is still stalling. Use our template to email your MP today and send them a copy of our new booklet, One year later.

Take action now!

In the news

This week’s roundup includes coverage in the lead-up to Easter.

Kevin Duguid for The Scottish Sun broke the news that murderer Paris Green, a man who says he identifies as female, is being moved to a male prison – a year after he was found to have caused physical harm to a female prison officer. Helen said that Green should never have been in a women’s prison. The news was also covered by Dean Herbert for the Scottish Daily Mail (print only).

Jacinta Taylor for the Mail on Sunday broke the news that the Office for National Statistics will not include a question on gender identity in the 2027 Census test. Fiona welcomed the news and said that the census should simply ask about sex, male or female, and instruct respondents to answer honestly.

Dan Roan for BBC Sport wrote a feature article on the International Olympic Committee’s decision to protect the female category at the Olympic Games on the basis of sex. Fiona warned that several sports in the UK have two-tier policies that provide fairness only for the top women; policies similar to the IOC’s need to be adopted by every governing body. Hadley Freeman for The Sunday Times referred to our Hampstead ponds legal case in her commentary on the story.

Janet Murray for The Telegraph continued her coverage on the implementation of Girlguiding’s new policy of excluding trans-identifying men and boys from being leaders and guides, reporting that there could be the risk of legal action between now and September. Maya said that the previous policy was obviously dangerous as well as unlawful: the organisation must mitigate these risks with interim policies.

Tim Sigsworth for the The Telegraph reported that ITV will portray Queen Elizabeth I as a trans-identifying man in an upcoming historical drama. Maya said that some in the arts sector seem to think that portraying historical female figures such as Joan of Arc as trans-identifying is edgy, but viewers who are already sick of gender ideology may vote by switching off.

The Times reported on the court ruling upholding the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s interim guidance on single-sex facilities following a legal challenge by the Good Law Project, in which Sex Matters intervened.

Helen wrote for her column in The Critic that women who play along with gender ideology are doing what many women have always done in the face of unreasonable male demands: placate and fawn because that’s safer and more profitable than female solidarity.

Writing for The Courier, Sean O’Neil reported that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has said that Professor Jacob George recused himself from the controversial puberty-blocker trial, rather than being recused by the regulator. Maya said that any reasonable person could have concluded that George had been under pressure to quit and that however the recusal played out, the central point is that the MHRA did not follow proper procedures when George came under fire.

The news that the Darts Regulation Authority (DRA) has barred trans-identifying men from the female competition was covered by BBC Sport, Martyn Ziegler for The Times, Ed Griffiths for GB News, and David Churchill for the Daily Mail. A report commissioned by the DRA and authored by Sex Matters chair Emma Hilton in her capacity as a developmental biologist was quoted in media reports. Fiona said that men’s physical advantages in darts may each be small but they all add up.

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Sex Matters survives on your support.
Without it, we simply wouldn’t exist.

Sex Matters can deliver essential research and analysis, help shape the debate, and empower people with clear, published guidance on their rights – but only with your support. Please contribute what you can to keep us going.

Donate

On 16th April 2025, the UK Supreme Court delivered its landmark judgment: the terms “man” and “woman” in the Equality Act 2010 refer to biological sex, and they always have.

And yet, one year on, that clarity has not translated into action. Public bodies, regulators, employers and charities that were expected to review and update their policies continue to delay, avoid or outright resist change. Others are removing services for women and girls altogether.

One year later, a new booklet from Sex Matters, asks a simple but urgent question:
If the law is settled, why are so many institutions still failing to follow it?

Through case studies and testimony, One year later shows how this failure is harming women and girls in:

• workplaces, where employees are not being provided with adequate facilities and face disciplinary action for raising concerns

• healthcare, where the NHS is continuing to operate based on gender self-ID

• local services, including leisure centres, refuges, and social care, which are not respecting the law

• sport, where a two-tier system in some sports protects elite athletes but leaves most women competing against trans–identifying men

• charities that are still wedded to the idea that “inclusion” means ignoring women’s rights

• criminal justice and safeguarding systems, where accurate data and risk assessment depend on clarity about sex.

Read the booklet

(and share it on social media)

Send it to your MP

The human impact

The booklet centres the voices of women who have experienced the consequences of this failure.It tells the stories of:

• a civil servant pushed out after raising concerns about policy compliance

• NHS staff disciplined for asserting sex-based boundaries

• women excluded from single-sex spaces — or penalised for objecting when those spaces are breached

• athletes facing unfair competition or sanctions for speaking out

• volunteers and carers deemed “unsuitable” for expressing mainstream safeguarding concerns.

Some contributors remain anonymous due to fear of professional or social repercussions. That alone speaks volumes.

These stories are part of a Sex Matters project called Where’s the harm?, where we will collect and expand stories that illustrate the harm to real people when institutions undermine and ignore the law.

Read the booklet.

It is coming up to the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court judgment which should have led to the end of “Stonewall Law” in Britain. But the idea that people who identify as transgender have a legal right to be treated as if they have changed sex is deeply embedded in institutions and the government has failed to bring them into line with the law.

Sex Matters and For Women Scotland together with 26 women’s organisations have written to the Prime Minister to ask why women are still waiting.

Dear Prime Minister

It is now almost a year since the Supreme Court confirmed, in its judgment in favour of For Women Scotland, that the terms “man” and “woman” in the Equality Act 2010 carry their ordinary biological meaning. The Court made clear that any alternative interpretation “would turn the foundational definition of sex on its head” and diminish protection against sex discrimination.

Yet a year on, women are still waiting for our rights to be fully recognised and upheld in practice.

We are still waiting for the Minister for Women and Equalities to lay the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s updated Code of practice for services, public functions and associations before Parliament.

We are still waiting for the Cabinet Office to withdraw its model policy advising civil servants that “refusing to accept an individual’s gender identity” constitutes unlawful discrimination.

And we are still waiting for government departments, local authorities, NHS bodies, regulators and publicly funded organisations to bring their policies in line with the law.

This continued failure to act has real and damaging consequences:

• Public servants fear being labelled “transphobic” when recognising biological sex.

• NHS staff, like Sandie Peggie and nurses in Darlington, are denied access to single-sex changing facilities, which undermines basic standards of dignity and privacy at work.

• Women are being denied lawful single-sex services, from gym changing rooms to rape crisis counselling. Some women, such as Miranda Newsom in Southwark, have been excluded from public services for raising legitimate concerns.

• Girls are missing opportunities to participate in single-sex activities, such as boxing training in Bristol, where girls-only services have been withdrawn.

• Women in custody continue to face the presence of male prisoners in the female estate and in probation hostels, with serious implications for safety and wellbeing.

• Lesbians continue to face exclusion from venues, associations and charities because they do not accept male individuals as lesbians.

Civil servants are required by the Nolan Principles to act with objectivity: impartially, fairly and on the basis of evidence “without bias or discrimination”. However, they are operating within institutions where the definition of discrimination has been widely misinterpreted, where the rights of women have been systematically undervalued and where concerns that the law is not being followed have been portrayed as “outdated” or “mean”.

Public authorities and regulators are exposing themselves to legal risk and creating ongoing uncertainty for employers, service providers and the wider public. This lack of clarity is harmful for everyone, including individuals who identify as transgender. It undermines both the rights of women and gay people, and the rule of law.

You have stated that violence against women and girls is a national emergency and that tackling it is a test of our values. That commitment must be reflected in the consistent application of the law that underpins women’s safety, dignity and equality.

The clarification of the law was secured through the efforts of ordinary women and small civil-society organisations, including For Women Scotland, Sex Matters, LGB Alliance and the other lesbian interveners. It is now incumbent on government to provide leadership and ensure that the law is properly understood and implemented.

We therefore call on you to:

• ACT urgently to ensure that all policies and guidance relating to single-sex services are brought in line with the Equality Act 2010, as clarified by the Supreme Court.

• COMMIT to addressing the issue of inaccurate recording of sex across public bodies.

• TELL the civil service to apply the law consistently across all government operations, policies and premises.

Yours sincerely

For Women Scotland
Sex Matters
LGB Alliance
Fair Play for Women
Women’s Rights Network
Women’s Declaration International
Transgender Trend
The Lesbian Project
Lesbian Fightback
Lesbian Persistence
Scottish Lesbians
Murray Blackburn Mackenzie
Genspect
Darlington Nurses Union
Cambridge University Society of Women
Merched Cymru
LGB Alliance Cymru
Scottish Feminist Network
Women Won’t Wheesht
Women o’ Scotland
Women of Surrey
Women of Wessex
Women of the Chilterns
Labour Women’s Declaration
Conservatives for Women
Liberal Voice for Women
Green Women’s Declaration
Lesbian Labour

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Emma is Sex Matters’ interim chair and the co-author of the most-cited paper on sex differences and the impact of testosterone suppression in sport. She is also a published critic of the now-defunct 2021 IOC policy, and a leading academic voice in calls to reinstitute sex screening. She’s been consulted by several international and national sports federations, and has been an expert witness in court cases, including a US Supreme Court amicus brief on sex screening.

Background reading

Watch Emma Hilton’s 2019 talk for Fair Play For Women.

Listen to Fiona talking to Spiked about how the Olympics battered women’s sports.

Read Fiona’s 2023 article for Spiked on the trans colonisation of women’s sports.

Read Fiona’s 2025 article for The Critic on how women managed to get men out of Olympic female sport.

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I spent 24th March at the Wembley Hilton with hundreds of charity CEOs for the annual conference of the Association of Chief Executive Officers of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO). I didn’t know if I would be welcome. But I am the CEO of a charity, and I have appreciated ACEVO’s practical support, so I put on my best “worthy of respect” face and joined them.

Jane Ide, CEO of ACEVO, told us that charities rank second only to doctors as the most trusted institutions in the UK. As it happens, charities and the healthcare professions are the two sectors that have done the greatest harm by accommodating and promoting the extremist demands of gender ideology.

None of the big-name charity CEOs talked to me, but plenty of others did. Over the course of the day several people came up and said “Thank you”. One asked if I was speaking (“Not this year!”); others listened with obvious surprise when I told them my story and the stories of women like Roz Adams and Sandie Peggie (it’s amazing what you can miss if you read nothing but The Guardian and watch nothing but the BBC). A few looked askance when they spotted me and made a quick getaway.

Many people said: “It’s so nuanced and complicated.” I tried not to lose my patience. It’s actually quite straightforward, I replied. There are two kinds of people: male and female. There are three kinds of spaces: male, female and unisex. Maybe that’s a bit basic for the “it’s nuanced” crowd, but it happens to be true.

In 2023 hundreds of charity CEOs signed the I Stand With Trans declaration. The campaign defined “transphobic behaviour” to include misgendering, deliberate exclusion from physical spaces and propagating the idea of trans as being an ideology.

That campaign, which was a proud declaration to commit unlawful belief discrimination, is now defunct, and the vibe even in the charity sector has shifted. I didn’t hear anyone declare their pronouns from the stage, the toilets hadn’t been performatively made gender-neutral for the event, and none of the speakers (one was Simon Blake, CEO of Stonewall) used their slot to hand-wring about the reset of expectations on trans rights. Instead they talked about international relations, the cost of national insurance, what to do with AI, and large-scale inequalities such as race, class, age and disability.

Most charities seem to have moved on from the briefly fashionable obsession with trans “inclusion”. The latest edition of Charity Times includes an overheated and under-informed article on the Supreme Court judgment, but the layout, all pink and blue ribbons, and the journalist, a signatory to I Stand With Trans, seem behind the times. The latest charity pledge, Third sector against transphobia, has a much less impressive list of signatories. The group promoting it is closed and secretive, as is the one behind Unlock the GATE, the campaign to continue to allow boys into Girlguiding.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission guidance will eventually be put before Parliament, and the Charity Commission might finally produce some guidance of its own. By now it is obvious to anyone with any common sense that a charity, like any other institution, needs to run on reality in order to succeed in its mission.

One of the themes of the day was collective courage. There hasn’t been much from the sector. Adopting trans ideology creates a conflict of interest that is kryptonite for governance. Maybe they will ask me to speak about this next year. I’m not holding my breath.

If you want to hear and be part of something inspiring, I’ve just come across the Unsilenced Project. It’s a collection of oral histories from those affected by the modern trans movement gathered by Suzanne Malyon, a gender-critical campaigner based in Scotland. There are so many stories to be told from this extraordinary time by ordinary people who found the courage to refuse.

Maya Forstater

Boys told to leave Girlguiding

Maya and Helen discuss Girlguiding’s recent decision to reverse its policy of allowing boys who identify as girls to join its groups. They trace the history of the charity’s move towards “inclusive” policies, the failure of the Charity Commission and other regulators to provide the necessary leadership, and the practical safeguarding risks that follow when a supposedly female-only organisation admits boys under the pretence that they are girls.

Protests planned for one year later

On Saturday 11th April, nearly a year after the Supreme Court confirmed that sex means sex in the Equality Act, the grassroots group @acts_grassroots is organising a series of #OneYearLater protests against the government’s inaction at locations across the country. Everyone is welcome – just turn up and make your voice heard.

Read more…

MPs debate the puberty-blocker trial

Fiona McAnena with James Esses, whose petition secured the debate

A Westminster Hall debate on the petition to cancel the puberty-blocker trial was held on Monday 23rd March. We summarise the arguments of the 12 MPs who spoke for the petition and the six who spoke in favour of the trial.

Read more…

In the news

It was a bumper week for news on sex and gender. The International Olympic Committee’s decision to bar male athletes from female events was covered globally. Fiona was quoted in many stories, including those by Lori Ewing and Iain Axon for Reuters, Dan Roan for the BBC Sport and Oliver Brown for The Telegraph. Welcoming the news, she said that women have been cheated of medals and of fairness in sport for years, and that this change must not be solely for elite competition. Sean Ingle for The Guardian quoted Sex Matters’ chair, developmental biologist Dr Emma Hilton, who said that SRY screening is a simple, non-invasive, once-in-a-lifetime check that returns female sport to female athletes.

In broadcast coverage of the story, Helen was interviewed by Peter Cardwell on TalkTV and Fiona by Miriam Cates and Alex Armstrong on GB News, while Sex Matters’ statement was mentioned on BBC Radio 4 and Radio 5.

Girlguiding UK’s announcement that trans-identifying boys will need to leave groups by September was covered by Jessica Murray for The Guardian, Michael Sheils McNamee for BBC News, Sanchez Manning for The Times, Gabriella Swerling for The Telegraph and Eleanor Harding and David Churchill for the Daily Mail. Helen said that Girlguiding had shown no concern for girls’ boundaries and failed to think clearly about what boys confused about their sex really need, which isn’t validation in a falsehood.

Jacob Freedland for The Telegraph broke the news that employment judges have received “awareness” training from transactivist groups. Maya said that training by Scottish Trans raises questions about the influence of gender ideology on the Scottish judiciary.

Will Bolton for The Telegraph and Richard Ashmore for the Daily Express reported that Vivenne Taylor, a trans-identifying man who stalked and threatened the female surgeon who did his gender-reassignment surgery, has been moved to the trans wing at the women’s prison HM Downview. Fiona pointed out that trans-identifying men in Downview have access to women’s facilities and even mix with female prisoners. Helen discussed the story with Julia Hartley-Brewer on TalkTV.

Maya wrote for the Daily Express on the Crown Prosecution Service referring to trans-identifying male murderer Aurin Makepeace as female and omitting the fact that Makepeace had met his victim when both were serving sentences in a men’s prison.

Maya was also quoted by Chris Hastings for the Mail on Sunday on Harriet Harman’s dismissive comments on the late Jenni Murray, saying that Murray’s principled stand was an integral part of her feminism rather than, as Harman insultingly insinuated, detracting from it.

Crowdfund to keep men out of the Ladies’ Pond

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Our director of campaigns Fiona McAnena with James Esses before the debate

More than 146,000 people signed a parliamentary petition set up by James Esses calling on the government to cancel the puberty-blocker trial and safeguard vulnerable children. This led to a Westminster Hall debate on Monday 23rd March.

These debates are the chance to discuss an issue. A government minister is present to hear and respond to the debate and there is a vote at the end, but there is no decision to be made.

Read a full transcript of the debate or watch it on parliamentlive.tv.

Opening comments

The debate was opened by the chair of the parliamentary petitions committee, Jamie Stone MP. He said:

“The petition raises two main areas of concern: the possible long-term medical side effects of puberty blockers, and whether meaningful consent can ever be obtained from a child or adolescent.”

Despite this, he sought to balance the horror of healthcare disasters like that experienced by Keira Bell by citing another transitioner whose experience with puberty blockers, he said, was “profoundly positive” and who had “experienced no negative health outcomes”. He said that:

“For her, being forced to undergo male puberty would have been the greater trauma. She is one of many who report that their lives have been significantly improved by timely support.”

Four MPs intervened during the opening speech, two Labour and two Conservative, all with pithy points for the petition. Tonia Antoniazzi pointed out that the survey being used in the “Pathways” trial asks questions like: “Have your parent(s) treated you fairly?”. She wondered how her son aged 11 would have answered that. Since any child at that age would probably say No, she felt the questions were not fit for purpose.

Graham Stringer challenged Stone’s framing of the issues as complex, saying:

“It is actually quite simple: we should not be experimenting on children, particularly as we cannot do double-blind experiments. Those are two fundamental reasons why these so-called experiments should not go ahead.”

Stuart Anderson said that his own children constantly changed their minds about things, and that he could see no justification for experimenting on children:

“What might be a short-term solution could become a permanent solution that people often grow to regret.”

Sir Julian Lewis asked about the data from all those children previously treated at the Tavistock’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), saying surely no more children should be treated with these drugs until that data had been explored.

Twelve MPs spoke for the petition

Speeches from backbenchers were limited to two minutes each. This meant there really could be no debate, because speakers short of time refused to give way to interventions. Twelve spoke for the petition, against the trial going ahead, and six spoke against the petition and for the trial.

For the petition, David Smith said that in the “Pathways” trial:

“Parents are being asked to consent to a potentially life-altering intervention to their children in the absence of a life-threatening condition, based on an unreliable diagnosis with an unknown trajectory.”

Rebecca Paul pointed out the flaws in the ethical committee process that had signed off the trial. Rosie Duffield spoke about the punishment meted out to whistleblowers who had expressed concern about the use of puberty blockers at GIDS over many years.

Jonathan Hinder said:

“Children of primary-school age cannot possibly give consent to these life-changing decisions. When they become adults, many of them will look back on what was done to them and ask, ‘How did this happen to me? How did the Government do this to me?’”

Carla Lockhart, who said she had met Keira Bell, pointed out that minors are not allowed to drive, get married, buy alcohol or own a gun, and that for most puberty would naturally resolve gender dysphoria. Iqbal Mohamed quoted the statistics on this, saying:

“They mean that the government are choosing to prioritise the interests of between five and 90 of the 226 children involved in the clinical trial at the expense of deliberately harming between 135 and 203 children, who will eventually come to terms with their birth sex.”

Joy Morrisey said the diagnosis is subjective, based on how the child feels, asking:

“Can the long-term risk of medical intervention be justified by such a vague diagnosis?”

Sarah Pochin said:

“Last week, I hosted a roundtable about the indoctrination of our children in schools on this very subject, and I heard horrific stories from isolated parents whose children were lost to them because of brainwashing and the fantasy world they had been taught about at school.”

Jim Allister pointed out how the feelings of adolescents fluctuate, making them among the most vulnerable and in need of protection.

Rebecca Smith drew on her experience as a “corporate parent” to flag the over-representation of looked-after children (those in the care of a local authority, living with foster parents or in residential homes) in the GIDS patient group, and pointed out that most of the girls were lesbians.

Gregory Stafford said:

“When the evidence is weak, the risks are real and the patients are children, pressing ahead is not leadership, but recklessness.”

Six spoke against the petition and for the trial

The main defence of the trial was that Dr Cass had recommended one, with three MPs suggesting that pausing the trial was a political move, not justified by the evidence. They pointed out that this trial had gained ethical approval and that no new clinical information has emerged since the Cass Review.

Carla Denyer and Dr Scott Arthur talked about meeting trans-identifying constituents or their parents, who expressed their regret that puberty blockers had not been available. Others talked cheerfully about “trans people”, with no acknowledgement of concerns about what “trans” means, how it might be determined in a child, or the historical evidence of desistance among most children claiming to be trans.

Alex Sobel quoted a constituent who had told him: “To be a true ally you must support all trans people and their needs, not just adults.” He said that politicians should not meddle in medical decisions, then cited the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) as “international best practice” and asked the minister for health “to meet advocacy groups such as TransActual”.

Two of these MPS said it was important to “do no harm” – and that making children wait for puberty blockers was harmful. To gasps of astonishment from the public gallery, Rachel Taylor, arguing that the trial must go ahead, said:

“We cannot afford to sacrifice the future of vulnerable young people on the altar of ideology.”

Heated exchanges about hounding and death threats

Tonia Antoniazzi intervened while Emily Darlington was speaking to defend Professor Jacob George of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), whose input led to the trial being paused, saying he was a decent man who was being hounded. Darlington retorted: “A leader of a political party shouted ‘Traitor’ at me when I said we should watch our language around this issue.” She went on to say:

“The honourable member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) has said she has received death threats; I get death threats too. This is not unique to the honourable member.”

Other MPs’ reactions to this indicated that they found it improbable that those opposing puberty blockers are issuing death threats.

Health spokespeople responded

The final three speakers were Helen Morgan, the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for health, followed by the shadow minister for health, Dr Caroline Johnson, who is a paediatrician, and finally Karin Smyth, minister of state for health (secondary care), to respond to all the points made. They all had more time to speak.

The LibDem position was somewhere in the middle. Helen Morgan welcomed the pause to address the MHRA’s concerns but said the evidence was needed. She said that “treatment should first be based on talking therapies” and that waiting times are a concern:

“All trans and non-binary people should be able to access the high-quality healthcare they deserve.”

Dr Caroline Johnson for the Conservatives was less equivocal. She said:

“To suggest persistent incongruence with gender stereotypes is wrong could undo years or decades of rolling back gender norms. If it is not causing the person any distress, why would we want to treat it, especially when we know that most children, even those with gender dysphoria who do have distress, will get better without any puberty blockers?”

She asked why there was a rush to do the trial rather than waiting for the data-linkage study, then had another pertinent question:

“What is the point of the treatment? It has been suggested that it helps transgender adults pass more easily as the opposite sex and potentially avoids surgical operations in adulthood, but how on earth can it be ethically, morally or medically right to treat a large group of children with risky medication to give cosmetic benefits to a much smaller number of adults?”

She pointed out that this was not like prescribing potentially harmful drugs such as when chemotherapy being given to save a child’s life. Puberty blockers are to pause “a perfectly normal physiological process in a physically healthy child”, and she recapped on the known health risks such as bone density, cognitive development, fertility and sexual function, which others had mentioned earlier. She asked whether prescriptions of puberty-blocker alternatives had gone up since the ban (Karin Smyth said she would give an answer to this). She concluded:

“I hope we can all agree that we do not need a clinical trial to know that helping a child to be at peace with themselves and their body is infinitely preferable to a lifetime of harmful medical intervention.”

Finally Karin Smyth, the minister for secondary care, talked through the background to the proposed trial and the Cass Review’s recommendations. She said that important final steps were being taken to enable the data-linkage study to begin and that the study analysis was expected to take around a year to complete.

She pointed out the harms being done by private prescribers of puberty-blocking medication. She responded to the concerns about waiting times by saying that three new gender clinics have been opened since April 2024, when the Cass Review was published, and a fourth is about to open, all operating a model different from that of the now-closed GIDS clinic.

She defended the planned clinical trial as “a key step that we are taking to build an evidence base to prove whether puberty blockers are safe and effective in treating gender incongruence and gender dysphoria”, but said nothing about the reasons for the pause or the next steps.

The ayes have it

At the end of the debate the chair asked for all those in favour (of the petition) to say “aye” and those against “no”. He then declared that “the ayes have it”, meaning that the majority of MPs in the room supported the petition to cancel the trial.

What now?

That is the end of the process for the petition. But opposition to the puberty-blocker trial will continue. The legal challenge brought by James Esses and Keira Bell has been “stayed” – that is, paused – until the discussions between the MHRA and the trial’s sponsor, King’s College London, have concluded. It seems inevitable that the legal challenge will then resume, or a new legal case will be brought to oppose the new trial arrangements.

Read Sex Matters’ timeline of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for children.

It is nearly a year since the Supreme Court confirmed that the terms “man” and “woman” take their ordinary, biological meaning in the Equality Act.

The law is clear, but, under pressure from internal networks and external lobby groups, many organisations are still clinging to gender self-ID.

The government has failed to act to make sure that employers, service providers and other duty bearers understand and follow the law, and many remain confused and fearful, or continue to hide behind excuses. This is harming women and girls who need everyday single-sex and separate-sex spaces and services for ordinary privacy and dignity, and female-only sports, charities and positive action to meet their needs.

On Saturday 11th April the grassroots group @acts_grassroots is organising a series of #OneYearLater protests at 11 locations across the country and internationally to show that the fight is not over and we are not giving up.

The Sex Matters team will be attending as many as we can:

• Maya Forstater will speak at the London event (Westminster)

• Fiona McAnena will speak in Belfast

• Nicole Jones will speak in Edinburgh

• Dr Emma Hilton will speak in Manchester.

There are also events in Cardiff, Sunderland (Bridget Phillipson’s constituency) and Plymouth. They all start at 1pm. There will be excellent speakers at all locations and a chance to show up, speak up, meet people and send a message to the government that sex-based rights matter.

Both men and women are welcome.

There are solidarity events in Berlin, Vienna, Düsseldorf and other international locations.

Follow @acts_grassroots on X for updates and locations.

On Friday 13th March I spoke on a panel about the Equality Act with Susan Smith of For Women Scotland and Akua Reindorf KC, at the Liberal Democrats’ spring conference in York. I talked in simple language about the purpose of the Equality Act and clarity and comprehensiveness of the For Women Scotland judgment.

I started by reading out paragraph 209 of the judgment:

“In short, the core provisions to which we have referred, which refer to sex, man or woman, are not capable of being read fairly and consistently with [changing sex ‘for all purposes’] without defeating their purpose and meaning. The definition of these terms… is not capable of being interpreted on the basis of certificated sex. Rather, sex has its biological meaning throughout this legislation: ‘woman’ always and only means a biological female of any age.... It follows that a biological male of any age cannot fall within this definition; and ‘woman’ does not mean or sometimes mean or include a male of any age who holds a GRC or exclude a female of any age who holds a GRC. To reach any other conclusion would turn the foundational definition of sex on its head and diminish the protection available to individuals and groups against discrimination on the grounds of sex.”

It couldn’t be clearer.

Nearly a year ago, when we all came out of the Supreme Court, we thought that perhaps we could all shut up shop and go home. Organisations that care about the inclusion of women and girls in public life would recognise that defeating the purpose and meaning of the law that protects women and girls against sex discrimination is bad. It’s bad not only because it harms women and girls directly, but also because it corrodes institutions when they systematically say one thing while doing another.

We thought the people who had allowed this harmful confusion about the law to take hold in their institutions would take this opportunity to put things right. Some might even say sorry. But they didn’t. Many hid behind the dog-eared excuse of “waiting for guidance”, and some started actively looking for loopholes.

Last week I wrote to the general counsel of Marks & Spencer’s (you can read more in our blog post: see below). He had written to me telling me that I was mistaken in thinking M&S allows men into women’s changing rooms. He said it simply doesn’t have women’s changing rooms at all. I wrote back with evidence that M&S advertises on its own website store-by-store that it has “fitting rooms(men)” and “fitting rooms(women)”.

We also heard about the King’s Trust (formerly the Prince’s Trust), a charity founded by King Charles in 1976, advertising a boxing and fitness programme for disadvantaged 16–25 year old girls and young women in Bristol, but allowing boys and young men who identify as female to take part. Shockingly, it decided to scrap the programme rather than risk having to tell young men who get a kick out of hitting women and girls that they aren’t welcome.

We’ve heard how the Women’s Institute group in Kentish Town has been refused a booking by the venue it used to meet in now that the charity is explicitly for women only. The venue that turned it away is another charity set up for women. And we’ve heard from women attending a women’s group run by a mental-health charity that they have been told the group is now not female only but for “anyone who wants to discuss women’s mental health”.

We have met the CEO of the Charity Commission and told him all this, and now we will write and tell him again. It is so dispiriting that organisations whose purpose is to help people would rather remove opportunities for women to be safe, to keep fit or to improve their mental health than stand up to those who regard these objectives as secondary to making sure trans-identifying individuals always get what they want.

In more cheering news, we heard at the end of last week that the Court of Appeal agrees that our case on the Hampstead Ponds is arguable. We are seeking to demonstrate that organisations exposing women to discrimination and harassment cannot use these kinds of wordgames as a defence. Thank you to everyone who has donated to our ponds case crowdfunder so far. Hopefully we will be back in court soon.

On Saturday 11th April the grassroots group behind the #199DaysLater protest is organising a series of events across the country to mark the anniversary of the Supreme Court judgment, and to protest against inaction. There will be events in London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Sunderland, Plymouth and Belfast and in four international locations. We will be there. We hope you will join us!

Maya Forstater

Women’s pool goes to High Court

Man appeals against exclusion from women’s tournament

This week Fiona and Helen discuss the case of Harriet Haynes, a trans-identifying male pool player who took the England Blackball Pool Federation to court last year because it restricted entry to women’s events to women. After losing in the county court, he has been granted permission to appeal. If the original verdict is upheld, that will set a strong precedent protecting all women’s sporting competitions against legal challenge from aggrieved trans-identifying men.

Read our case briefing.

M&S warned over mixed-sex changing rooms

Sex Matters has written to warn Marks & Spencer that its policy of advertising male and female changing rooms but then operating them as mixed-sex facilities could amount to indirect discrimination and harassment towards women.

Read more…

Hampstead Ponds: judicial review going ahead

We have won our appeal against the High Court’s refusal in February to allow us challenge the City of London’s gender-identity policy at the bathing ponds on Hampstead Heath.

Read more…

Crowdfund to keep men out of the Ladies’ Pond

We’ve increased our target to enable the next stage in this case! Thank you to everyone who donated to get us this far.

Read more…

In the news

The news that Sex Matters won our appeal to proceed with our legal challenge against the gender self-ID policy at Hampstead ponds was covered by BBC News, Sanchez Manning for The Times (print only), Aidan Radnedge for Mail Online, Jess Glass for Ham & High, and Ben Lynch for My London. Maya said that the government’s failure to publish updated guidance following last year’s Supreme Court judgment has provided an excuse to continue flouting the law on single-sex provision.

Daniel Martin for The Telegraph covered Sex Matters’ letter to Marks & Spencer (M&S) warning that its policy of mixed-sex changing rooms could amount to indirect discrimination and harassment towards women. Maya said that it is astonishing that M&S has decided that pretending no-one needs single-sex changing rooms is better than possibly having to say No to a man pretending to be a woman.

Also for The Telegraph, Ben Rumsby broke the news that trans-identifying male pool player Harriet Haynes has been granted permission to appeal against a judgment that he can lawfully be excluded from women’s competitions. Fiona said that men don’t belong in anything that is specifically for women, but it seems some are determined not to hear that clear, simple message.

Sam Merriman for the Daily Mail broke the news that the King’s Trust (formerly Prince’s Trust) decided to cancel a boxing course for disadvantaged girls and young women instead of preventing trans-identifying boys and young men from participating. Helen said that it’s outrageous that a registered charity would rather remove opportunities for young women than tell men who identify as women that their identity doesn’t give them the right to punch women.

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Sex Matters survives on your support.
Without it, we simply wouldn’t exist.

Sex Matters can deliver essential research and analysis, help shape the debate, and empower people with clear, published guidance on their rights – but only with your support. Please contribute what you can to keep us going.

Donate

Sex Matters has written to the senior leadership of Marks & Spencer (M&S) to warn the company that its policy of advertising male and female changing rooms but then operating them as mixed-sex facilities could amount to indirect discrimination and harassment towards women. As reported by The Telegraph, our CEO, Maya Forstater, said the policy created a “hostile and humiliating environment” for women.

In one of the latest examples of companies continuing to try to get around the law nearly a year on from the Supreme Court ruling, M&S told Sex Matters that its policies have not changed for many years. Its decision to pretend that it never offered single-sex changing rooms after decades in which it did so illustrates the extent to which employers and service providers are willing to harm all women and girls rather than say No to a tiny number of men who demand to be treated as women.

We wrote to M&S chair Archie Norman, chief executive Stuart Machin and general counsel Nick Folland on 9th March, noting that until recently the company’s clothing stores had clearly labelled male and female fitting rooms but had an unadvertised policy of allowing anyone to use either changing room.

Read our letter.

We expressed our disappointment that following judgments by the Supreme Court and the High Court which made clear that separate-sex facilities are lawful, M&S has not returned to a genuinely separate-sex policy, but instead is badging what were labelled men’s and women’s fitting rooms as “trying on” spaces. This makes them less effective, less welcoming and less safe, in particular for women.

“How astonishing that M&S, clothier to Britain’s middle-aged women, has decided that pretending no one needs single-sex changing rooms, after providing them for more than 100 years, is better than possibly having to say no to a man pretending to be a woman.”
Maya Forstater, CEO of Sex Matters

On 12th March, Nick Folland responded, stating that Sex Matters has been “misinformed” about the company’s approach to providing fitting rooms for its customers.

Read M&S’s reply.

He said that “for many years” M&S has provided unisex spaces in the “vast majority” of its stores. He also said that “most fitting room spaces have long been signposted to customers with a generic ‘Fitting Rooms’ sign and not, as you wrongly suggest, with individual signage for women or men”.

He suggested that the new “Try On” signage is not a change of policy but part of a wider store redesign, and updates signage that used to refer to “Fitting Rooms”.

This is simply not the case.

We wrote back with pictures from several stores showing signs that refer to “Men’s Fitting Rooms” (thanks to supporters for sharing these).

Read our second letter.

We also provided screenshots of online information for several stores that clearly states that they have men’s and women’s fitting rooms.

Marble Arch, London

Bullring, Birmingham

Princes St, Edinburgh (despite this saying Princess St, it is from the online information for M&S’s Princes St store)

Marks & Spencer’s policy of advertising that it has separate-sex fitting rooms but then telling staff to operate them as “unisex” spaces disproportionately disadvantages women. This is because women are subject to greater risks, vulnerability and modesty norms when undressing than men are. M&S’s ambiguous policy is also likely to

The policy also raises questions about whether male staff are deployed to what customers reasonably assume are “women’s fitting rooms”, but which Marks & Spencer views as “unisex”.

We have urged M&S to reconsider its policy, and return its fitting room policies to lawful, clear single-sex provision.

We hope the company is not going to try to get around the question by changing the advertising or signage to “menswear” and “womenswear” fitting rooms. The reason for separate spaces is not because of a difference in clothing but because of issues of propriety, modesty and safety that differ between women and girls on the one hand, and men and boys on the other.

Women and girls who chose to buy from M&S’s men’s or boys’ ranges should not be forced to change with men, or be harassed or discriminated against if they use the women’s fitting room to try clothes on. Similarly, men who chose to buy from the women’s ranges should not be forced to change in the women’s fitting room, or be harassed or discriminated against if they use the men’s fitting room to try clothes on.

People can choose clothing from anywhere in the store. But the fact that there are two sexes, and that sex matters when it comes to undressing, is neither difficult to understand nor controversial.

Read our case briefing.