\n<\/p>\n
A<\/span> year ago, the supreme court made its landmark judgment on single-sex spaces. In a long-running case against the Scottish government brought by gender-critical campaigners For Women Scotland (FWS), the court ruled that, for the purposes of the Equality Act, the legal definition of a woman was based on biological sex.<\/p>\n The judgment has significant ramifications for who can access women-only services and spaces, such as refuges or toilets. But most service providers are still awaiting practical guidance on how to apply the ruling.<\/p>\n Guidance exists \u2013 contained in an updated code of practice from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) \u2013 and on Tuesday it emerged that the commission has resubmitted this guidance for government approval.<\/p>\n This follows fierce criticism by women\u2019s groups supportive of the supreme court ruling over the length of time taken by the equalities minister Bridget Phillipson to consider the guidance, which was originally submitted last September.<\/p>\n But a leaked draft, which, in effect, suggested a ban on transgender people using facilities according to their lived gender, was also met with strong opposition from organisations that opposed the ruling, who believed the guidance was unfair and legally unworkable.<\/p>\n Those who championed the judgment are frustrated at the slow pace of change, while those impacted by it are still trying to make sense of what it really means for their day-to-day lives.<\/p>\n Janey, 70, who is based in London, has been living \u201chappily and independently\u201d as a woman for nearly half a century. Soon after the supreme court ruling, she described a new and visceral anxiety about using women\u2019s facilities.<\/p>\n A year on, Janey (a pseudonym) still nips into a McDonald\u2019s ladies\u2019 loo. \u201cI just have to get on with my life,\u201d she says. \u201cI have a fear but it only lasts a few seconds. Some people are enjoying the fact it\u2019s more acceptable to say \u2018you can\u2019t go in there\u2019 but I\u2019ve not had that myself.\u201d<\/p>\n She had one unpleasant incident when a service user challenged her. She was worried about her manager\u2019s reaction, who didn\u2019t know she was transgender, but she found her to be supportive. \u201cShe said: \u2018I\u2019ve known you for 15 years as Janey.\u2019 I felt very protected.\u201d<\/p>\n She is more concerned about younger generations: \u201cThere is a chipping away of rights happening in the US as well as here.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Susan Smith: \u2018The bottom line is women have this protection under law.\u2019 <\/span> Photograph: Murdo MacLeod\/The Guardian<\/p>\n On the day of the ruling, Smith described the emotion of walking out of court to cheers, as well as \u201cmassive relief\u201d.<\/p>\n That feeling remains: \u201cThe bottom line is women have this protection under law and women\u2019s hands are strengthened whether they are going to court or within the workplace or in social settings, they have this behind them.\u201d<\/p>\n Some women now feel more confident, says Smith. \u201cIt was very scary to advocate for your own rights in the time before, and people were very swift to call women names if they had objections to not having female-only spaces.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the things that\u2019s been really wonderful, especially in Scotland, is seeing organisations [like some Rape Crisis and Women\u2019s Aid centres] take back control of their mission and say: \u2018No, we are single sex and there\u2019s a reason for that because we deal with this very sex-specific trauma that women have endured\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n A year ago, Smith says, \u201cwe were a little bit naive\u201d in assuming For Women Scotland could dial down its campaigning. She has found the UK government\u2019s delay in approving the EHRC guidance \u201cfrustrating\u201d, but argues it shouldn\u2019t make a material difference to organisations \u201cbecause the law is still the law\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe day the ruling came through, we knew we\u2019d have to take significant legal advice,\u201d says Melissa Green, the chief executive of the National Federation of Women\u2019s Institutes. The WI had been trans-inclusive for 40 years, \u201clong before it was a matter of public debate\u201d.<\/p>\n But last December, the WI announced in the Guardian it would no longer accept transgender women as members from April 2026.<\/p>\n \u201cIt became increasingly clear that as a single-sex organisation there was no other interpretation for sex under the Equality Act other than a biological one,\u201d Green says.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was really hard. We had a clear mandate for our representative council to remain trans-inclusive if the law allowed. We knew many members would be devastated by it, not just those who were transgender, but just those who really value the inclusivity that is part of the fabric of the WI.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd we also knew there would be members who felt it was the right decision, and that\u2019s challenging as well, because there are strong views on both sides of the debate and our role is to find a way that all members feel comfortable being able to express their views.\u201d<\/p>\n There are now more than 60 groups taking part in the Sisterhood Initiative, trans-inclusive meetings created outside formal WI membership.<\/p>\n Lifelong trade union activist Macdonald felt galvanised by last April\u2019s ruling. She is taking her own union, the PCS, to tribunal for allegedly discriminating against her gender-critical beliefs. \u201cI was very pleased when the ruling came out,\u201d she says. \u201cThat clarification was exactly what I\u2019d been saying.\u201d<\/p>\n Macdonald was concerned women-only spaces in her union were diminishing. \u201cThe opportunity to speak about sensitive issues that pertain only to women because of their sexed bodies, like menopause or pregnancy loss, could no longer take place.\u201d<\/p>\n She believes trade unions should embrace open debate. \u201cI would like to see much more effort put into balancing the rights between trans people, who should never be discriminated against, but I would like to see that in equal measure to women as a sex class.\u201d<\/p>\n With her case proceeding, Macdonald is \u201cdisappointed\u201d the UK government has yet to ratify the EHRC\u2019s new guidance. \u201cIt seems a strange place to be that you\u2019ve got the EHRC clarifying and reiterating a lot of points that the supreme court have made and yet our parliament isn\u2019t reflecting that.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Jamie Hale: \u2018Gendered spaces are such a core part of the hospital system, I worry that trans people won\u2019t want to risk putting themselves in that position.\u2019<\/span> Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi\/The Guardian<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a wheelchair user, and a lot of places are repurposing adapted toilets to be gender neutral, which puts pressure on that toilet when you only have one per venue,\u201d says Hale.<\/p>\n Since the ruling, he says he has experienced \u201cpalpable uncertainty\u201d among hospital staff who don\u2019t feel they have clear guidance on whether he should be on a male or female ward, or in a single side room.<\/p>\n \u201cUsually I\u2019ll have a casual conversation to make sure they are aware I was assigned female at birth, but it worries me when staff feel nervous about asking medically relevant questions,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n He worries some trans people may hesitate about seeking medical help. \u201cGendered spaces are such a core part of the hospital system, I worry that trans people won\u2019t want to risk putting themselves in that position.\u201d<\/p>\n The Good Law Project has spearheaded a number of legal challenges since the ruling. O\u2019Thomson makes a distinction between \u201ca narrow decision in law, that the court itself emphasised wasn\u2019t taking away anyone\u2019s rights\u201d and how it has been \u201cmisrepresented to be a vindication of the exclusion of trans people from society\u201d.<\/p>\n They argue it should be possible for the EHRC to produce a revised code.<\/p>\n \u201cIt could say: here\u2019s all the ways you can be trans-inclusive if you want to be. Here\u2019s all the ways you can exclude trans people where it\u2019s proportionate and necessary to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n O\u2019Thomson is still receiving \u201cso many emails, every single day, from people who are experiencing discrimination, or people who want to be inclusive but don\u2019t know if they can be, and want help.\u201d They say some people now feel emboldened to police single-sex spaces, meaning \u201ca lot of people are now self-excluding\u201d.<\/p>\n The Grange, a community pub, opened in 1910 but its building is even older, meaning that structural changes to update toilet facilities would be expensive.<\/p>\n Last September, Jones said she was concerned that some visitors would \u201cpolice the toilets themselves\u201d.<\/p>\n But this hasn\u2019t come to pass. Jones has hit on a temporary fix, labelling their one accessible toilet \u201cfor everyone\u201d. \u201cIt\u2019s our personal solution for the space we\u2019ve got. There\u2019s been a lot of noise about it but we\u2019ve not actually had any issues with customers.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t have the money to do anything else. They\u2019re expecting small businesses to fall into line with no support.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A year ago, the supreme court made its landmark judgment on single-sex spaces. In a long-running case against the Scottish government brought by gender-critical campaigners For Women Scotland (FWS), the court ruled that, for the purposes of the Equality Act, the legal definition of a woman was based on biological sex. The judgment has significant<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48358,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[1442,4090,3948,571,20320,13531,570,1569],"class_list":{"0":"post-48357","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-changed","9":"tag-landmark","10":"tag-lives","11":"tag-ruling","12":"tag-singlesex","13":"tag-spaces","14":"tag-transgender","15":"tag-year"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/48358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u2018I have a fear but it only lasts a few seconds\u2019 | <\/strong>Janey, a trans woman working in the mental health sector<\/h2>\n
\u2018Women\u2019s hands are strengthened\u2019<\/strong> | Susan Smith, For Women Scotland<\/h2>\n
\u2018We knew many members would be devastated\u2019<\/strong> | Melissa Green, Women\u2019s Institute<\/h2>\n
\u2018That clarification was exactly what I\u2019d been saying<\/strong>\u2019 <\/strong>| Fiona Macdonald, trade union activist and retired civil servant<\/h2>\n
\u2018It worries me when staff feel nervous about asking medically relevant questions<\/strong>\u2019<\/strong> | Jamie Hale, a trans man and theatre-maker<\/h2>\n
\u2018A lot of people are now self-excluding<\/strong>\u2019<\/strong> | Jess O\u2019Thomson, trans rights lead, the Good Law Project<\/h2>\n
\u2018We don\u2019t have the money to do anything else<\/strong>\u2019<\/strong> | Bryony Jones, manager of the Grange pub, Cardiff<\/h2>\n