Thirteen months after the UK Supreme Court ruled that sex in the Equality Act refers to biological sex, a revised code of practice from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has reignited debate over single-sex spaces. The code, laid before parliament this month, confirms that organisations cannot legally open a single-sex service to people of the other sex, even if they are transgender. Providers are told to offer alternative mixed-sex facilities instead. The guidance has taken more than a year to arrive; women and equalities minister Bridget Phillipson cited the need to avoid any new “burden on business” as part of the delay.
Toilets are only the start of the debate
Public toilets are the most visible sex-segregated space most people encounter daily. But the guidance touches on far less visible facilities: prisons, refuges, rape crisis centres, lesbian groups, women’s health clinics and sports. The writer — a social affairs journalist and author of Sexed: A History of British Feminism — argues these spaces have been the real focus for groups such as For Women Scotland, Woman’s Place UK and Fair Play for Women, which led the campaign for sex-based rights.
Trans rights groups reacted angrily, calling the guidance a mandate to exclude trans people from ordinary life. It states that any checks — for example, if a trans man were mistaken for a biological man in a women’s health setting — must be made “sensitively” to avoid discrimination or harassment.
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For entry to such spaces, the criteria must be sex.
Gender-critical feminism grew from attacks on these spaces
Several leading figures in the gender-critical feminist movement are lesbians or survivors of sexual abuse who have spoken publicly about this. Karen Ingala Smith, co-founder of the Femicide Census, argued for sex-segregated services years before Women’s Aid, the national domestic abuse charity, officially supported them. Her book Defending Women’s Spaces explains why such facilities matter to traumatised victims of domestic violence rebuilding confidence and reestablishing boundaries.
Mixed-sex support groups already exist for trans people who also suffer domestic abuse, and a shift toward gender-neutral commissioning has been noted. The vast majority of public spaces and activities are mixed-sex — which is why the Equality Act treats sex-segregated spaces as “exceptions.” They say it is not OK to remove this option on grounds that seeking a female-only space is bigoted, nor to claim a service is sex-segregated when it is not.
The law is the law, but data on violence is central
The EHRC is only the messenger.
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Reform UK is the only party with a plan to repeal the Equality Act. But if a campaign emerges to eliminate sex-segregated spaces, the author suggests rising levels of sexual violence will feature prominently in arguments against it. A large body of evidence points to males’ far greater propensity for violence and sexual abuse.
In 2024, a government minister reported that out of 245 transgender prisoners identifying as women in England and Wales, 151 were convicted of a sexual offence — a far higher proportion than the roughly 2% of female prisoners jailed for sex crimes.
Other data may lead to different conclusions, but it remains scarce.
We don’t even know how many trans people live in England and Wales; a question on the 2021 census was botched.
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Beyond safety: fairness, privacy and dignity
The threat of male violence is not the only reason sex-segregated spaces matter. Fairness in sport and the right of women, including lesbians, to have their own groups are also important. So are privacy and dignity for women who must change clothes at work, such as the nurses in Darlington who objected to undressing in front of transgender colleagues and brought claims against their NHS employers. With 739,000 female victims of sexual offences in England and Wales last year, and a rise in camera-enabled crimes — indecent exposure, voyeurism, filming of abuse, image-sharing — many women see the case for such spaces getting stronger, both as prevention and as a resource for survivors. They note that mixed-sex school toilets is “one of the worst ideas that anyone has ever had.”
The trans population faces its own challenges.
This guidance is not a reason to disregard these. But the writer argues it should not have taken the Supreme Court or the commission to make clear that sacrificing sex-segregated facilities is not the answer.
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