0h 6min, dec 3, 2025 y - Women's Institute to Stop offering Trans Women Membership

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The Women's Institute has announced with "sincere regret" it will no longer offer membership to transgender women.

The change to the organisation - which has thousands of local branches offering events, campaigns and social gatherings across the UK - will come into effect from April 2026. It follows a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that a woman is defined by biological sex under equality law.

Until now the Women's Institute has allowed trans women - biological males who identify as women - to join.

Melissa Green, chief executive of the National Federation of Women's Institutes, said: "Unfortunately the legal position as it stands means that we can no longer offer that."

The decision comes after "40 years of fellowship and sisterhood with those women", she told BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour.

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