Backlash to WI ‘forcing groups to admit men’

The Women’s Institute (WI) has been urged to stop ‘forcing’ its groups to accept men as members.

In a letter to the WI’s Board of Trustees, campaign group Women’s Institute: Women’s Declaration (WIWD) slammed a policy dating back to 2015 that states: “Anyone who is living as a woman is welcome to join the WI and to participate in any WI activities in the same way as any other woman”.

A separate equality, diversity and inclusion policy claims that admitting men “enriches” WI membership and ensures it is “a place for all women to celebrate who they are”. Its glossary also defines transphobia as “denying” a person’s “gender identity or refusing to accept it”.

Opposition

In response, Chief Executive of the National Federation of Women’s Institutes (NFWI) Melissa Green claimed to be “very proud” of the policies and how “inclusive and supportive WI members are”.

She reported that there are no plans to review the policies “because we’ve received no communication suggesting that that’s what our members want”.

But WIWD’s new petition calling for the WI to halt admission of men pending a vote on the policy has already been signed more than 2,000 times.

‘Thought police’

The WIWD accused WI leadership of “seeking to police the thoughts of its members”, while ignoring that sex is “a biological fact”.

The group stated: “By failing to define what a woman is, by having a wide description for a trans woman and by not allowing respectful debate, or debate of any kind, the NFWI has de facto forced individual Women’s Institutes to accept men.”

It highlighted that the policy puts the WI in an “untenable position” and undermines its ability to “legitimately campaign for women-specific issues” such as single-sex wards.

‘Immutable’

The Christian Institute’s Social Policy Analyst Dr Sharon James said: “The Women’s Institute has gone off the rails by forcing its groups to accept men as members. How can the largest women’s organisation in the UK campaign on female-specific issues if it has lost any notion of what a woman is?

“The leadership should really heed the backlash from members who say it has shut down debate and seeks to police people’s thoughts if they uphold the reality of biological sex.

“If the WI truly wants to be ‘a place for all women to celebrate who they are’, it needs to return to the truth that womanhood is based in biology and it is both immutable and unchangeable.”

Single-sex groups

Earlier this month, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) told the Government that ‘sex’ should be clearly defined as biological sex under the Equality Act (EqA).

Baroness Falkner of Margravine stated that “redefining ‘sex’ in EqA to mean biological sex would create rationalisations, simplifications, clarity and/or reductions of risk” in a number of current areas of legal dispute.

For example, she said it would enable single-sex groups to restrict membership to biological women, as well as allow employers to limit certain permitted roles, such as a warden in a girls’ hostel, to biological women only.