The Women’s Institute in the UK, the venerable community organization that counted Queen Elizabeth II among its chapter presidents, has announced it will no longer accept transgender women as members following the UK Supreme Court’s ruling on the legal definition of “woman” and “sex”, the Guardian reports.

Membership in the organization – founded in Canada in 1897 before welcoming women in chapters across the Commonwealth – will be restricted in the UK to those who are documented female at birth, with new members or those renewing expected to confirm that they meet that criteria beginning in April 2026.

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The Women’s Institute began welcoming trans women in the 1970s and made their inclusion official in 2015. The organization claims more than 175,000 members in chapters in the UK, Canada, Australia, and South Africa.

Melissa Green, chief executive of the National Federation of Women’s Institutes, lamented the decision.

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The organization made it with the “utmost regret and sadness,” she said, 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.”

Asked if legal threats contributed to the organization’s decision to ban trans members, Green said that fewer than a hundred complaints were received by the Women’s Institute, many from the same members and others from outside the group.

Green said the organization plans for trans women to remain “part of the WI family,” and that it would launch new “sisterhood groups” in April “open to all.”

They’ll be “a place where we will recognize transgender women as women and explore what it is to be a woman in the 21st century,” she said.

“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,” said Jude Guaitamacchi, founder of the Trans+ Solidarity Alliance.

“It’s cruel and a failure of this government to protect human rights, including freedom of association.”

The high court ruling handed down in April this year defined the terms “woman” and “sex” in the UK’s Equality Act to refer only to a biological woman and to biological sex. In the aftermath, the government is mired in what’s been called a “minefield” of competing legal rights.

Based on internal draft guidance on the ruling from the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission, trans people can expect continued controversy around their place in society, as lawmakers criticize the guidance as taking the ruling too far, too fast.  

The “practical guidance” goes “far beyond” the Supreme Court judgment, Labour MP Rachel Taylor, a member of the women and equalities committee, said of the draft document. “It’s not fair, it’s not necessary and it does nothing to advance the rights of women and trans people.”

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