Supreme Court judgement is a victory for common sense

Susan Smith and Marion Calder, right, co-directors of For Women Scotland with campaigners celebrate outside the Supreme Court in London after terms "woman" and "sex" in the Equality Act were ruled to refer to a biological woman and biological sex. Picture: Lucy North/PA Wire

I may even indulge in a Zoom meeting or two. But last week I found myself in a city centre location with 100 other women waiting for a Supreme Court judgement to come through on a big screen. The UK’s highest court was considering the case brought last year by the grassroots women’s group, For Women Scotland (FWS). Their question to the court was simple: Can you define a women in law? The answer they got back, after several months of deliberation, was equally straightforward: The terms “women” and “sex” in the 2010 Equality Act refer to a biological woman and biological sex.

The cheers from the women around me were deafening. The sense of relief palpable. After nearly a decade of campaigning for women’s sex-based rights, the law was clear. If a space or a service, such as a domestic abuse refuge or a workplace changing room, is designated as women-only, a person who was born male but now identifies as a woman does not have the right to use that space or service, even if he has a gender recognition certificate stating that the sex marker on his birth certificate has changed.

As we gathered to toast FWS’s success, I bumped into city councillor Jo Mowat. She was as pleased as I was by the result and couldn’t wait to get back to the City Chambers to share the news with her fellow councillors and senior officials. We both wondered how Scottish Green Councillor Alex Staniforth would take the news. Only a few weeks previously, he had put forward a motion that called on the council to defund Edinburgh Women’s Aid unless it provided “comprehensive services to trans women”. His motion was eventually watered down to affirm the council’s commitment to the “rights and dignity” of trans people while fully supporting the “vital” work of Edinburgh’s Women’s Aid. I can only imagine that he is still crying into his beard.

Teasing apart, the judgment has serious implications for council services and policies, from its support for women’s organisation such as Edinburgh Rape Crisis, which until recently was run by a trans-identified man, Mridul Wadhwa, to the promotion of gender ideology in the city’s schools. My grandchildrens’ high school in the west of the city boasts about its gold charter award from LGBT Scotland and is particularly proud of its scheme where pupils are encouraged to wear a badge declaring their pronouns. Previously, the city council has urged schools to use LGBT Youth Scotland’s teaching materials that set out 40 terms including “neo-pronouns” such as “perself,” “xyr” and “eirself”. It will be interesting to see if there is the same enthusiasm for encouraging children to identify as “vis” instead of “she” when the annual International Pronoun Day comes around in October.

No doubt Councillor Staniforth and his Scottish Green colleagues are busy drafting a motion that will describe the Supreme Court judgement as a vicious attack on trans people. I prefer to think of it as victory for common sense.