Female-only service is a win for women’s rights campaigners - Susan Dalgety

JK Rowling has launched a 'women-only' sexual violence support service in Edinburgh called Beira's Place

It was Scotland’s first refuge and over the decades has proved a lifeline for thousands of women and their children escaping domestic violence.

As the group acknowledged on its 50th anniversary in 2023, while attitudes have changed since 1973, the incidence of domestic abuse is still far too high and there is a long way to go in the fight for a society free from violence against women.

That fight has become sidetracked in recent years by the emergence of a campaign to accept transgender men as women, simply because they say they are.

Women’s support services, such as the national network of Women’s Aid refuges, have been forced by the Scottish Government and others to open their doors to men who ‘identify’ as female.

Another essential women’s service, Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC), even employed a male-born chief executive, who was forced to quit after an employment tribunal found that a former ERCC employee had been the victim of a “heresy hunt” because she believed that women should get a female-only service.

And author and philanthropist, JK Rowling, opened Beira’s Place in 2023 here in Edinburgh in response to a growing demand from female survivors of violence and trauma for a women-only service.

And now Edinburgh Women’s Aid has followed the example of Beira’s Place, with an announcement last week that it will no longer allow men who are transgender to use its service. It is to be for women only.

As the charity explained on its website: “We recognise that there are differing views on sex and gender, which are protected by the Equality Act 2010…

"However, as an organisation we do hold specific positions in regard to our service provision and employment”.

Their position puts them at odds with the national umbrella organisation, Scottish Women’s Aid, which still holds to the mantra “trans women are women” – but it will have cheered women across the city and beyond.

Edinburgh Women’s Aid was set up not as a mixed-sex service, nor to offer support to the small number of men who choose to live as women, but as a female-only service.

By going back to its roots, it is standing up for women at their most vulnerable.

All the evidence gathered over more than 50 years of women’s support services shows that to be properly effective, they must be led by women and provide single-sex spaces where women feel secure.

A 1973 newspaper article announcing the opening of Edinburgh Women’s Aid refuge described it as a “minor victory for Women’s Lib”.

The news that the service is once again a female-only service is a significant win for today’s women rights campaigners.