The Supreme Court decides that only biological women are women for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010 the decision in For Women Scotland Ltd (Appellant) v The Scottish Ministers (Respondent) UKSC/2024/0042
On 16 April 2025 the Supreme Court handed down the highly anticipated judgment in the case of ‘For Women Scotland.’ The key issue to be decided in this case was to determine the issue as to whether a person with a full gender recognition certificate (GRC), which recognises that their gender is female, is a ‘woman’ for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010. The legal definition of a women is a hot legal topic with the tension that has been ongoing between those that hold ‘gender critical beliefs’ in that they believe sex is real and immutable and those that see sex and gender as more nebulous concepts where how one ‘identifies’ determines their gender, ‘gender identity.’ That is to say you can be a woman because you consider yourself to be one, irrespective of your birth sex.
This case has huge implications for the freedoms and rights of women and their ability to retain women only spaces for their own protection and safety. The Equality Act 2010 already provides for single sex services (on the basis that such a service is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim) but the definition of ‘woman’ has impacted the single sex nature of these services over recent years. This has led to ‘self-identifying women’ (namely men) utilising and encroaching upon these spaces created to safe-guard women.
Therefore this case, which determines the definition of ‘women’ for the purposes of both the Gender Recognition Act and the Equality Act 2010 is seminal. The judgment was unanimous with the Supreme Court finding that ‘women’ for the purposes of these statutes means biological women and does not include those with a gender recognition certificate which legally recognises their gender as female. Therefore the definition has been narrowed (in my view correctly) to mean only those born female are women.
One cannot discuss this judgment without stating that the legal clarification of woman for the purposes of the GRA and EqA is not to take away from the rights of trans people. Their vulnerabilities are acute and there is already a legal framework in place to protect them from discrimination. This is not an erosion of trans rights but rather a re-defining of the rights of women to be afforded the protection of genuinely single sex spaces which they desperately need.
As a result of this judgment employers will now have to take stock of their ‘inclusion’ policies in relation to ‘women’s’ facilities and fundamentally understand that a woman, for the purposes of the Equality Act 2020 means ‘biological woman’, as in born a woman. Therefore there can be no dilution of the term woman. All reasonable steps will have to be taken to ensure that single sex spaces are protected in line with the determination of the Supreme Court. This blog was written by Elizabeth McGlone, Managing Partner at didlaw
