WRDA notes with disappointment the judgement of the Supreme Court regarding the interpretation of the word “woman” as used in the Equality Act 2010 to exclude transgender women.

While it is important to remember that the Equality Act does not apply in Northern Ireland, and so the impact will not be felt locally, this decision will have negative impacts for trans people across the UK and beyond, as it signifies a direction of travel that will influence our local decision makers. WRDA stands with you and will do all that we can to support your inclusion.

It is also important to note that the judgement was at pains to stress that "we counsel against reading this judgement as a triumph of one or more groups in our society at the expense of another, it is not." The judgement also makes clear that this interpretation of the Equality Act does not remove all protections from trans people, with or without a Gender Recognition Certificate; trans people are also still protected from discrimination on the ground of gender reassignment and to invoke the provisions on direct discrimination and harassment, and indirect discrimination on the basis of sex. We recognise that this is a cold comfort for the trans community reading this, but it is important to remember that these protections remain in place at present.

Most importantly, as a feminist organisation, we are wary of efforts to define womanhood. The history of feminism has been an active throwing off of restrictive definitions that were devised to keep us small and to prevent us from doing certain things. It is telling that the question that is so often repeated by those who seek to exclude trans women is “what is a woman?”, and never “what is a man?”; legal definitions of men and manhood are thin on the ground here and around the world. Efforts to label and pin down womanhood are as old as patriarchy; we rejected them then and we reject them now.