ANDY RAIN/EPA
Women celebrate the door of the Supreme Court in London, Britain, on 16 April 2025, after the decision that the definition of a woman is based on biological sex.
What is a woman? Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled on Wednesday that term refers to biological sex. Long dispute began in Scotland, with the author of Harry Potter JK Rowling to fund her.
The UK Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that the definition of women in British legislation on gender equality should be based on biological sex, excluding transgender women.
“The unanimous decision of this Court is that the terms ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ in the 2010 equality law refer to a biological woman and a biological sex“The vice-president announced the last court-the equivalent of the Constitutional Court in Portugal-Patrick Hodge.
However, he stressed that the judgment should not be seen as a defeat of LGBT+rights activists, as “it gives protection to transgender people, not only against discrimination through the protected characteristic of gender change, but also against direct discrimination, indirect discrimination and substance harassment in its acquired genre”.
The decision, he explained, tries to find a “coherent meaning” to interpret the legislation with antecedents in the 1970s to combat sexual discrimination and was not affected by later legislation on sex change.
The decision will also have vast consequences: Transsexual women will no longer be able to use services and spaces reserved for women, and should raise appeals so that UK legislation on gender recognition is reformulated.
Scottish government defeated by three women
The case concludes a long dispute Between a Women’s Rights Defense Organization and the Scottish Government, which argued that a transgender person with a gender recognition certificate as a woman could be considered a woman under the laws of equality.
The organization that filed the resource, for Women Scotland (FWS), claimed that its results could have consequences at the entire UK With regard to sex -based rights, as well as services such as bathrooms and hospitals wards.
The case derives from a 2018 law passed by the Scottish Parliament that establishes that there must be a 50% female representation in the administration councils of Scottish public bodies. This law included transgender women in their definition of women.
The Women’s Rights Group successfully contested this law, arguing that its redefinition of “woman” surpassed the powers of the Regional Parliament.
The Scottish Executive then issued guidelines that the definition of “woman” included a transsexual woman who had a gender recognition certificate. THE Contestation was rejected By a court in 2022, but the group obtained authorization last year to bring their case to the Supreme Court.
JK Rowling was the first to support the decision
The Women’s Rights Defense Group counted among its supporters with the writer J.K. Rowlingwhich will have donated tens of thousands of pounds to support their work.
“It took three extraordinary and tenacious Scottish women, with an army behind them, for this case to be heard by the Supreme Court and, when they won, protected the rights of women and girls throughout the UK,” he set out in a message on the social network X the author of the Harry Potter saga, by positions in relation to transsexual women. The author has vehemently defended that the rights of transgender people should not be granted at the expense of women.
A political issue
Founded in 2018, the organization that now wins is described as “a group of women who work to protect and reinforce the rights of women and children”, but critics consider it transphobic.
On the opposite side, LGBT+ and Amnesty International organizations argued that preventing transgender people who have a certificate of recognition of sex from benefiting from sexual discrimination is contrary to human rights principles.
The question about the definition of women was present in the electoral debates of 2024, but in the meantime almost disappeared from the political agenda following the victory of the labor party.
In 2022, the Scottish government passed a law to facilitate gender change, allowing it to do so without medical advice and from the age of 16. Before the controversy, law was eventually blocked by the central government of Londonwhen conservatives were still in power.
In January 2023, the Scottish authorities had to announce the suspension of the transfer of any transgender prisoner with antecedents of violence against women to a women’s prison after two cases shocked public opinion.
