Sex matters in sport
Sport and physical recreation are one of the most obvious places where women and girls need dedicated provision and investment to ensure opportunity, fairness and safety. This is because men are, on average, taller, faster, and stronger than women. Female participation lags behind male participation. Single-sex spaces such as changing rooms are also crucial to female inclusion.
Rules and policies that allow men to participate, compete or use facilities “as women” disadvantage women.
Sex Matters’ new report, Getting back on track, explains how the Equality Act 2010 provides the legal framework for protecting and providing for women and girls in sport.
Listen to Fiona McAnena and Maya Forstater discuss the report in the Sex Matters podcast.
Read Maya Forstater’s speech at the report launch at the House of Lords on 4th June 2026.
Under the Equality Act, sports organisations can be service providers, employers, associations and qualification authorities. Duty bearers that design or operate policies (or instruct, cause or induce others to do so) which put women at a disadvantage are at risk of claims for sex discrimination. Public authorities may also face claims that they are not fulfilling the public-equality duty. Women and “trans women” do not share a protected characteristic, meaning that this group cannot be the target for lawful positive action “for women”.
Legal misunderstanding
Over the past 15 years, governments, sports councils and national governing bodies (NGBs) have conflated the protected characteristic of “sex” (innate biology) with “gender reassignment” (identifying as transgender). This resulted in policies that prioritised allowing men who identify as women to access female spaces, activities and competitions under the banner of “inclusion”, undermining female-only provision.
The Supreme Court ruling in For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers clarified that in the Equality Act, the terms sex, woman, and man refer to a person’s innate biology, thus confirming that it is lawful to exclude men (including all “trans women”, regardless of whether they have a gender-recognition certificate) from benefits, services and facilities provided for women.
The court affirmed that including biological men in provisions for women undermines the purpose of the Equality Act exceptions that allow single-sex provision and the public-sector equality duty.
It’s not just Section 195
The legal exceptions that allow for single-sex activities and facilities in sport go well beyond those concerned with participation as a competitor. They include exceptions that enable service providers to give women and girls the time, space and resources they need to thrive in sport. Supporting female participation isn’t just about who gets to compete in which event, but about what enables sports providers to offer services, investment, competitions, facilities and development programmes to women and girls across a range of situations:
Single-sex associations (Schedule 16)
Single-sex and separate-sex services (Schedule 3 Part 7)
Positive action to meet specific needs of women or men (Section 158)
Charities for women or for men (Section 158)
Competitive events (Section 195)
Employment limited to men or women where this is a genuine occupational requirement (Schedule 9).
The exceptions are permissive rather than prescriptive, but this doesn’t mean providing for women and girls in sport is optional.
Organisations that cater for both sexes should make sure that they consider the needs of women and girls: failing to provide fair and safe sports opportunities may amount to indirect sex discrimination.
The public-sector equality duty (Section 149) requires that public authorities consider women’s needs when setting policies. This includes the UK sports councils and local authorities.
Unlawful policies and practices continue
Despite the legal clarity of the Supreme Court ruling, many organisations continue to operate unlawful policies. Examples of current practices that undermine women’s sport include:
Misguided inclusion policies: bodies like the Lawn Tennis Association and Royal Yachting Association encourage local clubs to presume inclusion for “trans” individuals, allowing trans-identifying men into women’s competitions even though this leads to female exclusion and self-exclusion.
Female participation programmes undermined: activities aimed at increasing female participation, such as British Cycling Breeze Rides, are advertised for women but welcome trans-identifying men. The result is that women who have been led to expect a women-only activity may find themselves confronted with a man, sometimes in secluded locations.
Unreliable data and rankings: some charities such as Parkrun encourage trans-identifying men to register by “gender” rather than sex, allowing male runners in the female category to inflate their age grade scores and top the female rankings, rendering women’s finish positions unreliable.
Culture of fear: the sports sector has created an atmosphere of intimidation, in which women are warned against discussing fairness and safety, and risk sanctions or non-selection if they speak out against the inclusion of males in the female category.
Sports bodies that continue to operate policies that allow men in women’s or girls’ activities risk legal liability for direct and indirect sex discrimination against women, as they are no longer protected by the Equality Act exceptions. Public bodies also risk judicial review for failure to comply with the public-sector equality duty.
The need for leadership
You shouldn’t need to be a scientist or a lawyer, an expert in the Equality Act or particularly brave to argue that sports should be provided fairly and safely for women and girls, but right now you do.
The report ends with a call for leaders in the sector to step up:
The minister for sport must call for opportunity, fairness, and safety for women and girls to be respected at every level of every sport.
The Sports Councils Equality Group (SCEG) should update its misleading 2021 “trans inclusion” guidance to withdraw the so-called trans-inclusion option, making clear that women’s and girls’ activities must exclude everyone male.
The sports councils must make a joint statement committing to women’s sport and producing clear guidance that when it comes to protections against sex discrimination, “woman” means female and “man” means male.
Individual sports councils need to bring data-collection surveys and registration data in line with the biological, binary reality of sex as defined in the Equality Act.
National governing bodies and publicly funded organisations should sign a fairness pledge to protect women’s sport and to use sex-based categories in their equality impact assessments.