Women's Institute to ban transgender women after U.K. Supreme Court rulinghttps://www.advocate.com/world/womens-institute-united-kingdom-transgender 🔗Ryan Adamczeski (3 Dec 2025)
The largest women's membership organization in the United Kingdom says it has been forced to ban transgender women after the U.K.'s Supreme Court ruled they are not legally considered women earlier this year.
The Women's Institute will no longer offer formal membership to trans women going forward, the organization announced Wednesday. CEO Melissa Green said in a statement that "this is not something we would do unless we felt that we had no other choice."
"To be able to continue operating as the Women's Institute — a legally recognised women's organisation and charity — we must act in accordance with the Supreme Court's judgment and restrict formal membership to biological women only," Green said. "However, this change is only in respect to our membership policy and does not change our firm belief that transgender women are women."
For Women Scotland, a right-wing organization dedicated to so-called women's "sex-based rights" — a dog whistle used by anti-trans activists to exclude trans people from public spaces and reduce women to their genitals — filed a lawsuit against the government challenging the inclusion of trans women.
The court ruled in their favor, determining that trans women aren't legally considered women under the nation's Equality Act. The ruling has already been applied by some agencies, including the Football Association, which banned trans women from playing women's soccer in May without mentioning trans men.
