Common Sense. Clarity. Courage.

If They Cannot Define a Woman, They Cannot Defend Women

As Helen McDade, our candidate in Mid Scotland and Fife, put it, Reform is incredulous that the Greens want to lecture Scotland on misogyny while refusing to state the most basic truth of all, what a woman is.

That is not a side issue. It goes to the heart of whether any law on misogyny, women’s dignity, or women’s safety can be trusted at all. If political parties cannot define a woman, then they cannot seriously claim to protect women. If they put activist ideology ahead of biological reality, then every promise they make on safeguarding is built on sand.

Reform rejects gender ideology because it has brought confusion where the law should provide clarity. Women and girls have the right to privacy, safety, dignity, and fairness. That means single sex toilets, single sex changing rooms, single sex hospital wards where appropriate, and single sex spaces across public life. It also means a firm national law prohibiting men from women’s spaces. That is not prejudice. It is common sense, and most people know it.

The law is now moving back towards common sense. In April 2025, the UK Supreme Court ruled in For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers that the terms “woman”, “man”, and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 refer to biological sex. The EHRC then confirmed that a Gender Recognition Certificate does not change a person’s legal sex for Equality Act purposes. That matters because it gives clear legal backing to the protection of genuine single sex spaces.

We have watched too many politicians duck this issue, too many institutions bend to pressure, and too many women treated as if defending their own rights is somehow offensive. Reform will not play that game. Sex is real. Biology is real. The law must reflect reality, not slogans invented to satisfy activists.

This position is already rooted in Reform policy. Reform UK’s national programme states that public toilets and changing areas must provide single sex facilities. It also pledges to ban transgender ideology in primary and secondary schools, with no gender questioning, social transitioning, or pronoun swapping, and with schools required to have single sex facilities.

Reform in Scotland has taken the same clear line. We believe government policy must be based on biological sex, not gender ideology. We will defend women’s spaces, protect children from ideological indoctrination, and restore sanity to public life. Scotland does not need more evasions from parties that cannot answer the simplest question. It needs the courage to say what is true and the will to defend it.