Women's Institute to stop offering trans women membership

The Women's Institute has announced with "sincere regret" it will no longer offer membership to transgender women.

The change to the organisation - which has thousands of local branches offering events, campaigns and social gatherings across the UK - will come into effect from April 2026. It follows a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that a woman is defined by biological sex under equality law.

Until now the Women's Institute has allowed trans women - biological males who identify as women - to join.

Melissa Green, chief executive of the National Federation of Women's Institutes, said: "Unfortunately the legal position as it stands means that we can no longer offer that."

The decision comes after "40 years of fellowship and sisterhood with those women", she told BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour.

The Women's Institute describes itself as "a legally recognised women's organisation and charity", and to comply with the Supreme Court judgement says it must "restrict formal membership to biological women only".

The organisation said it would create a new national network of "sisterhood groups" alongside Women's Institutes that want to offer a "trans-inclusive space" to "develop that friendship and support for transgender women".

It follows an announcement by Girlguiding on Tuesday that it would ban transgender girls from joining.

Under UK law, the 2010 Equality Act sets out the rules for single-sex organisations and spaces being able to exclude members of the opposite sex.

In April, the Supreme Court ruled that if a single-sex organisation or space is open to people of a different biological sex, then for the purposes of equality law it can no longer be regarded as single-sex.

The equality watchdog, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), has said it will update its guidelines for businesses and services on how to interpret the law.

Ms Green said it was a "difficult decision" for the Women's Institute, saying the organisation has 175,000 members and some will "feel very strongly on both sides of this".

She said this was the only option available, adding "ultimately the WI is a women's organisation".

"Our council were very clear, the majority of them wish to remain trans inclusive, but that legal option wasn't open to us," she said.

"Some of our transgender members have been with us for four decades, they've been part of our family," she said, adding she recognises it will cause "sadness" for them.

"We intend to be clear that whilst the law restricts membership, it's our firm organisational belief that transgender women are women," she said, adding it would continue to "express our continued sisterhood to transgender women" through the new network being set up.

Ms Green would not go into details on how the restriction on membership would be enforced, saying the organisation is awaiting EHRC guidance.

The organisation also declined to say how many trans women were members.

But she said any enforcement would need to be proportionate to the setting.

"We could have waited for the EHRC guidance, but I think society needs organisations such as my own to lead," she said when asked why the decision had been taken now.

Helen Belcher, chair of trans rights organisation TransActual, said: "This is the second national charity in as many days which has been pushed to force out trans people, against the organisation's will and at great cost.

"If these changes must be forced on organisations, then it's clear this is the result of a handful of extremists imposing their views on groups which have been very happily trans inclusive for many years if not decades."

"Our thoughts are with the people who may be outed by their exclusion, or lose access to their vital social groups and support networks at a time when those are more important than ever," she added, calling on the government to act "urgently to rectify the situation".

Helen Joyce, director of women's rights charity Sex Matters, said: "A group set up for women must be able to keep out all men, even the ones who are very insistent that they feel like women.

"If women – or men – want to join mixed-sex groups, there are plenty available. There are also plenty of charities that solely serve trans-identifying people.

"What is distinctive about single sex groups is obviously lost if people of the opposite sex are admitted."