Gender Issues

Press Statement – For Women Scotland SCOTUK Judgement is Welcome, but the Law Still Fails To Protect Women and Children

April 16, 2025

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Following the landmark For Women Scotland victory at the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom (SCOTUK), FET calls on the UK Government to establish consistent safeguarding by repealing the Gender Recognition Act.

The Family Education Trust (FET) today called on the UK Government to ensure that vulnerable women and children are fully protected by repealing the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (GRA), following today’s Supreme Court ruling that the terms ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex.

While this is a much-needed step towards common sense and proper safeguarding by preventing men who identify as transgender women from being legally defined as a ‘woman’ for the purposes of equality legislation, its scope is limited and did not touch other important pieces of legislation, such as the GRA. Section 9 of that Act states that:

‘Where a full gender recognition certificate is issued to a person, the person’s gender becomes for all purposes the acquired gender (so that, if the acquired gender is the male gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a man and, if it is the female gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a woman).’

Due to this legal fiction remaining in place, there is still confusion as to whether men with Gender Recognition Certificates (GRC) can enter female-only spaces. This is highly problematic as treating people who identify as ‘transgender’ differently under some circumstances is necessary for proper safeguarding practices to be in place.

The term ‘transgender’ covers not only people who can be medically diagnosed as suffering from gender dysphoria, or even those who have undergone ‘transition’ (cosmetic surgery to look like the sex with which they identify), but even those who are simply opting to begin such a process or who identify as the opposite sex without undergoing ‘transition’ surgery due to anything from an ideological fixation to a sexual fetish. As things still stand therefore, and as one example, men who experience autogynephilia cannot be restricted per se from accessing vulnerable children in schools as staff members because of their ‘protected status’.

This situation must be resolved by a fundamentally different approach in law and in medicine to gender dysphoria, which does not seek to reconstruct social reality so as to ‘affirm’ transgender practices and ideology. The best start to this process, in keeping with the best logic of this SCOTUK ruling, is to repeal the GRA altogether. 

Peter D. Williams, Director of the Family Education Trust, said:

‘This SCOTUK Judgement is to be welcomed as a step in the right direction, but whilst the legal fiction exists that it’s possible to ‘change sex’, women and children will never be completely safe from predatory men. Whilst people who suffer from gender dysphoria should be treated with compassion and respect, It is not kind to change social rules so as to include and affirm their belief that they were ‘born in the wrong body’, when doing so has clear adverse effects on women, and on children. It is time for our society to return to an evidence-based approach to gender dysphoria, and to reject the public display of gender ideological practices and sexual fetishes. The only way to do that consistently is to repeal the Gender Recognition Act.’

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Notes to Editors 

  • The Family Education Trust is a national educational trust which researches the causes and consequences of family breakdown. It has no political or religious affiliations and is funded entirely by voluntary donations. FET conducts evidence-based academic research, always seeking to identify the underlying causes of social problems and giving particular time and attention to a wide range of areas that affect the stability of the family and the welfare of children and young people. It then uses the research for the purposes of informing, educating, influencing and supporting policymakers, educators, parents and the wider public. FET celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2021. 

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