EHRC guidance

The EHRC's new guidance, interim update, following the Supreme Court ruling should have guaranteed women's right to single-sex spaces — but instead, it leaves dangerous loopholes. By hiding behind "legitimate aims" and "proportionality," it risks allowing men back into women's spaces and toilets.

Women's rights must be automatic, not optional. If a space is for women, it must be female-only — no excuses, no case-by-case decisions.
Service providers who breach this must face real penalties, just like they would for serious health and safety violations.

Keep men out of women's spaces. Protect women's privacy, dignity, and safety — fully and without compromise.

read it here

our full response

Following the UK Supreme Court’s ruling in For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers (April 2025), which confirmed that “man” and “woman” in the Equality Act 2010 refer to biological sex, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) issued new guidance for service providers. This was meant to help organisations understand how to apply single-sex exceptions lawfully. However, instead of giving women the clear, robust protections we need, the EHRC’s guidance leaves dangerous gaps and loopholes that continue to put women’s safety, dignity, and privacy at risk.

The EHRC’s new guidance, following the Supreme Court ruling that sex means biological sex under the Equality Act, should have been a victory for women. Instead, it is a missed opportunity that risks betraying us again.

Rather than giving clear, firm protection for women’s spaces, the EHRC has wrapped everything up in vague, dangerous language about "legitimate aims" and "proportionality." This effectively hands service providers an excuse to still let men into women’s spaces if they feel under pressure — exactly what’s been happening for years.

Women do not want our rights to privacy, dignity, and safety subjected to endless "balancing exercises" by managers, charities, or bureaucrats. We want certainty. When a space is single-sex, it must mean women only, full stop — no ifs, no buts, no loopholes for "legitimate aims."

This confusion is made worse when you consider that the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) already makes clear in its workplace guidance that toilets must be genuinely single-sex, meaning male and female toilets, not mixed or based on "gender identity". If the HSE can understand the need for clear, sex-based provision, why can’t the EHRC? Their new guidance risks clashing with basic health and safety standards, and leaves women exposed to uncertainty and harm.

The Supreme Court gave the EHRC a clear foundation to defend women’s rights. Instead, they have left women hanging, forced to rely on the courage of individual service providers. Women fought for legal protections for a reason: so we wouldn’t have to beg for our boundaries to be respected.

Recommendations:

There must be an automatic legal ban on men — meaning biological males — entering any space designated for women. This should not be left to the discretion of individual providers.
Enforcement must carry real weight: if a service provider lets men into women’s spaces, they should face serious penalties — fines, sanctions, or even closure orders — just as they would if they stored mouldy food or created a fire hazard.
Where mixed-sex toilets are provided, they must consist only of fully enclosed, self-contained units — floor-to-ceiling walls and doors — with individual basins inside each cubicle, to guarantee full privacy for all users. No open-plan washrooms, no gaps, no exceptions.

Women’s safety, dignity, and privacy are not negotiable. They must be protected as seriously as any other public health or safety issue.

We have waited long enough. Lawmakers and regulators must finally listen: keep men out of women’s spaces, and treat women’s boundaries like the non-negotiable rights they are.