On 16 April 2025, the UK Supreme Court issued a ruling that will reverberate through politics, policy, and public life for years to come. In For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers [2025] UKSC 16, the Court unanimously confirmed that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 refer to biological sex—not gender identity, legal status, or self-perception. Just biology.

For many women, it was a long-awaited validation

Law Meets Lived Experience

The case was brought against the Scottish Government’s attempt to include transgender women with Gender Recognition Certificates (GRCs) in the definition of “woman” for public board appointments. The court found this inclusion unlawful, stating it undermined the intention of sex-based protections in the Equality Act. Lord Hodge, Deputy President, stated that:

“The protected characteristic of sex refers to a biological category. It is concerned with the protection of people who are biologically male or female, rather than the gender with which a person identifies.”

While some decried the ruling as a regression in trans rights, for many women, it marked a turning point—a line in the sand for the protection of female-only spaces and a signal that the law had caught up with what women have been saying for years.

The Cost of Speaking Up

Sandie Peggie, a mental health nurse with NHS Fife, was suspended after objecting to the presence of a biologically male colleague in a female,only changing space. Her act was not of hostility, but of boundary. Yet she was treated as the problem. Today’s ruling proves her stance was not only reasonable, it was lawful.

Maya Forstater, too, lost her job after tweeting that biological sex cannot be changed. Initially dismissed as “not worthy of respect in a democratic society,” her beliefs were later upheld by an employment tribunal, and she was awarded over £100,000 in damages (BBC News, 2023). Her case set a legal precedent for protecting gender-critical beliefs under the Equality Act.

These women are not radicals. They are professionals, mothers, advocates, silenced for insisting that the word woman still means something.

A Culture of Compliance

Over the past decade, public institutions have increasingly prioritised inclusion policies that conflate sex and gender. While often well-intentioned, these policies have led to situations where women are pressured to abandon their needs, language, and spaces to accommodate gender ideology. Female staff and service users alike have been gaslit into silence—told their discomfort is discriminatory, their boundaries bigoted.

What the Supreme Court has done is restore a vital element of the legal framework: clarity. And with clarity comes courage

From Courtrooms to Podiums: The Battle Over Women’s Sport

In the sporting world, similar tensions have erupted. Earlier this month, the final of the Ultimate Pool Women’s Pro Series in Wigan saw two transgender women; Harriet Haynes and Lucy Smith, compete for the title. Several female, born players were eliminated in the lead-up, prompting outcry and protests from both competitors and spectators. Haynes is now suing the English Blackball Pool Federation after it introduced a policy restricting female competition to those assigned female at birth (The Telegraph, 2025).

Meanwhile, swimmer Lia Thomas, who made history as the first openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I women’s title, lost her case before the Court of Arbitration for Sport in 2024. The court upheld World Aquatics’ policy banning trans women who underwent male puberty from female elite competitions, thereby excluding Thomas from the Paris Olympics. An “open” category was offered, but it saw no entries (The Guardian, 2024).

British Olympian Sharron Davies has long warned of this trajectory. “Fairness cannot exist if sex-based categories are overridden by identity,” she argued, calling for separate categories to protect the integrity of women’s sport (Fair Play for Women, 2023).

A Protest That Echoed

In April 2025, at the Cherry Blossom Open in Maryland, American fencer Stephanie Turner made her protest public. When asked to compete against a transgender opponent, she knelt in refusal and was disqualified. Now, she is set to testify before the U.S. Congress alongside USA Fencing’s inclusionary leadership. The event, already dubbed the “Showdown on Fairness”, is expected to shape forthcoming legislation on women’s sports (New York Post, 2025).

Turner, like Peggie and Forstater, stood still and faced the consequences. And in doing so, she revealed the absurdity of a system that claims to protect women while punishing them for naming their own boundaries.

A Global Flashpoint: The Olympic Controversy

The debate over fairness in women’s sports reached a global audience during the 2024 Paris Olympics. A New York Post opinion piece highlighted a controversial incident where a female athlete suffered a significant defeat against a transgender competitor. The article described the event as a “brutal, unfair Olympic beating,” sparking widespread discussion about the inclusion of biological males in women’s sports categories. Critics argued that such matchups compromise the integrity of women’s competitions and raise concerns about athlete safety.

Inclusivity vs. Integrity: A False Binary?

To be clear, these cases are not attacks on transgender people. They are defences of women. And more importantly, they challenge the growing institutional belief that inclusion must always trump fairness—even when it comes at the expense of women’s safety, dignity, and access.

These are not isolated incidents. They are symptoms of a broader cultural moment, one in which women are expected to yield the ground they have fought to secure, all in the name of progress.

But progress built on the silencing of women is no progress at all.

Conclusion: The Turning Tide

The Supreme Court ruling is not the end of the struggle—but it may be the beginning of the end of institutional gaslighting. Women have always known what a woman is. Now the law does too.

To every woman who refused to stay silent—Sandie Peggie, Maya Forstater, Stephanie Turner, and others unnamed—you were not bigots. You were brave.

And you were right all along.

References

• BBC News (2023) Woman awarded £100k after losing job over biological sex tweets. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-58273252
• UK Supreme Court (2025) For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers [2025] UKSC 16. Available at: https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2024-0042
• The Guardian (2024) Lia Thomas out of Olympics after losing legal battle. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com
• The Telegraph (2025) Women’s pool final sees two trans athletes face off. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/snooker/2025/04/07/womens-pool-final-two-transgender-athletes
• Fair Play for Women (2023) Sharron Davies: Why I oppose trans athletes in women’s sport. Available at: https://fairplayforwomen.com/sharron_davies/
• New York Post (2025) Female fencer invited to testify before Congress after refusing to compete against trans opponent. Available at: https://nypost.com/2025/04/15/us-news/female-fencer-who-took-a-knee-is-invited-to-testify-before-congress
• New York Post (2024) Brutal, unfair Olympic beating: Tragic result of letting biological men compete in women’s sports. Available at: https://nypost.com/2024/08/01/opinion/brutal-unfair