EHRC guidance puts women first, which may upset people

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EHRC guidance puts women first, which may upset people<br>In a world in which male needs are constantly centred, it's hard for people to accept that women have rights

Milli Hill<br>May 21, 2026<br>∙ Paid

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Today Bridget Phillipson has finally published the much-awaited EHRC guidance, making clear what businesses and public bodies must do under the law to protect single sex spaces. The guidance comes in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court ruling that man and woman must mean biological sex for the purpose of the Equality Act. Published this afternoon, it does seem to be fairly unequivocal that all males, however they identify, will be barred from women’s toilets, changing rooms, and sports teams.

Read the guidance

Many people are now hopeful that the guidance will bring complete clarity and signal an moving forward of the debate.<br>At a first read, it seems very even-handed, making clear that single-sex facilities must be provided for women (the biological kind) but that this thoughtfulness and provision must also extend to the consideration of trans people. You would think it would be enough. But I doubt it will be.<br>As someone who has followed the sex vs gender stories closely for several years, I’m pretty sure that the guidance will still be unacceptable to those who just can’t understand that - in some situations, not all - sex matters.<br>And that it matters an awful lot, to an awful lot of women.

Andy Burnham, who has said that being against males in female spaces is a ‘tiny minority view’ held by people ‘supposedly’ standing up for women’s rights. Note the use of ‘supposedly’. One word can say so much.<br>This week a short video I shared on social media went viral. In the clip, I asked why people don’t think about feminist history when they support a man’s right to be in a women only app - as has happened in the case of Giggle vs. Tickle in Australia. Why don’t they consider what they are truly supporting, when they champion the rights of men to be accepted in women only spaces? Don’t they know the historical - and current - precedents for women being unable to gather and organise, unsupervised by men?

It seems like some people, Andy Burnham being one, don’t have the capacity to consider the current situation in its wider context. Instead they dismiss women who feel that single sex spaces are important as misguided bigots, rather than take time to think about our legitimate, deeply-considered concerns. This is because we live in a world, that, just like Andy, often can’t be bothered to take women’s voices seriously, and in which what women want and need always always comes second to men.<br>Don’t believe me? Yesterday the BBC ran a story about fathers in Afghanistan who are ‘forced to make impossible choices’ and ‘sell their daughters’ due to extreme poverty.

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