The Women’s Institute will no longer accept transgender women as members from April following the UK supreme court ruling on the legal definition of a woman, the Guardian can reveal.
Melissa Green, the chief executive of the National Federation of Women’s Institutes, said the organisation had taken the decision with the “utmost regret and sadness”, adding it had “no choice” but to exclude trans women from its membership.
“Incredibly sadly, we will have to restrict our membership on the basis of biological sex from April next year,” Green said. “But the message we really want to get across is that it remains our firm belief that transgender women are women, and that doesn’t change.”
Membership of the 110-year-old organisation will be restricted to those who are registered female at birth, with new members or those renewing expected to confirm that they meet the criteria.
It comes a day after Girlguiding announced that trans girls would no longer be able to join the organisation, saying it had made the decision after seeking legal advice as a result of the supreme court ruling.
Girlguiding on Tuesday said: “Trans girls and young women, and others not recorded female at birth, will no longer be able to join Girlguiding as new young members”.
Green said the organisation wanted trans women to remain “part of the WI family” and that from April it would launch new “sisterhood groups”, open to all, which would be “a place where we will recognise transgender women as women and explore what it is to be a woman in the 21st century”.
Responding to the ban, the Trans+ Solidarity Alliance founder, Jude Guaitamacchi, blamed the move on the government’s failure to provide clarity. “Imagine being a group that has welcomed trans members for generations being told who you can and cannot associate with, regardless of the wishes of the group itself,” they said. “It’s cruel and a failure of this government to protect human rights, including freedom of association.”
In 2023, the WI said it would continue to “celebrate” the lives of the transgender women enriching its membership, after reports it was facing an attempt by an internal group to overturn inclusive policy – in place since the 1970s and made official in 2015 – which allows transgender members to join the organisation of more than 175,000 members.
In April this year, the supreme court issued a historic and definitive ruling that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act refer only to a biological woman and to biological sex. The government is still considering guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) on how to apply the ruling.
The Labour MP Rachel Taylor, a member of the women and equalities committee, said the draft EHRC guidance went “far beyond” the supreme court judgment. “It’s not fair, it’s not necessary and it does nothing to advance the rights of women and trans people.”
Asked if the WI was facing legal threats, Green said it had received fewer than 100 pieces of communication on the issue, many from the same people or outside the organisation, but confirmed there had been “reference to legal challenge”.
Green said she no longer used social media so as to avoid toxic debate. “I’ve tried to keep myself as clear from that as possible, because I think that draws you into this toxicity of this debate, and it is our role to draw ourselves back out of it and work through this in a more reasonable, respectful way,” she said.
Green said that while some would welcome the decision she was aware it would also prompt “anger, sadness and disappointment”. The organisation said it had “a large transgender population” in its membership, but did not have exact numbers of how many people would have to leave.
“My hope is that the message that the transgender community gets from this is not one of betrayal, but is one of our desire to continue to maintain those friendships and that support,” she said. “This has been a very difficult year for everybody, particularly for the transgender community, but I hope that when that anger subsides the transgender community will know that we stand with them.”
On Wednesday, the WI will tell its members – who are part of 5,000 independent local WIs – of the decision in a statement, which reads: “It is with the utmost regret and sadness that we must announce that from April 2026 we can no longer offer formal membership to transgender women.
“As an organisation that has proudly welcomed transgender women into our membership for more than 40 years, this is not something we would do unless we felt that we had no other choice.”
Transgender WI members known to the leadership team at the organisation had already been informed of the decision before an announcement, said Green.
“They’ve been so respectful and so understanding of the decision, but profoundly sad,” she said. “I spoke to one 80-year-old woman who has been in our organisation for decades, who said it was one of the greatest experiences of her life, and the only place in her 80 years where she’s been treated as a woman with respect.”
Green acknowledged that while the new sisterhood groups were not compulsory, they had the potential to become flash points.
“It is absolutely our responsibility to make sure the sisterhood groups are safe spaces [and] that they don’t exacerbate division,” she said. “One of the really important things for us is to try and help ourselves as an organisation, but society more generally, to find a way to work through some of these discussions, to have differing views, to disagree better.”
Green said the decision had been made by the WI’s 138-person council and board after extensive legal advice. She acknowledged that the months after the supreme court decision had been “very difficult”, but added: “As an organisation, over 110 years, we’ve demonstrated that in the face of change and difficulty our members rise to the challenge. They take these difficult issues and they find a way through them. We’re a group of strong women and I know we can find our way through this as well.”
