The government's own Equality Impact Assessment warns that forcing trans women to use men's services creates a disproportionate risk of violence and sexual assault, and that anyone who does not conform to gender stereotypes faces increased harassment. That is not a campaigner's claim. It is the government's own finding, published alongside the very guidance it is using to justify exclusion.
What does the Equality Impact Assessment actually say?
Equality Impact Assessments exist precisely to catch this kind of harm before policy lands. When a government publishes guidance that will change how public services treat a group of people, it is legally required to assess the likely effect on those people's safety, dignity, and equality. The assessment accompanying the current EHRC draft guidance does not hide the risk. It names it: trans women directed away from women's services and into men's spaces face a disproportionately higher risk of violence and sexual assault. People who do not conform to gender stereotypes, whether trans or not, face increased harassment under a regime that tries to police who belongs where.
That should have stopped the guidance in its tracks. Instead, the government is pushing ahead anyway.
Why is the government doing this?
The political context matters here. The EHRC draft guidance followed the Supreme Court's ruling in For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers (2025), in which the Court interpreted the terms "sex", "man", and "woman" in the Equality Act 2010 as referring to biological sex for the purposes of that Act. The Court was clear that this was an interpretation of existing legislation, not a change to it, and that trans people remain protected under the characteristic of gender reassignment. The Court did not remove protections from trans people, and it did not purport to say anything about what a woman is in medicine, society, or everyday life.
But the EHRC moved fast. Its draft guidance, which does not yet have the force of statutory guidance, began pushing a reading of that ruling that would allow, and in some cases encourage, the systematic exclusion of trans women from women's services. The government has not pushed back. It has, if anything, leaned in.
The honest answer to why is political. Trans people have become a reliable flashpoint in a culture war that certain parts of the media and certain political actors have decided is worth fighting. The safety data is inconvenient, so it is being noted and set aside rather than treated as the decisive finding it should be.
Why not withdraw the guidance and legislate instead?
As Nadia puts it: "Why not instead withdraw the guidance and legislate to clarify that the Equality Act was always intended to be trans inclusive?"
That is the right question, and it deserves a direct answer. The Equality Act 2010 was passed by the last Labour government after that same government passed the Gender Recognition Act 2004. The GRA gave trans people with a Gender Recognition Certificate the legal right to be recognised in their acquired gender for most purposes. It is extraordinarily difficult to argue that a Parliament which had just done that then passed an Equality Act intended to exclude those same people from the protections that recognition was meant to afford. The sequence of events alone makes the exclusionary reading look implausible.
If the Supreme Court's interpretation has created a gap between what Parliament intended and what the Act now appears to say, the answer is to close that gap through legislation. Parliament made the GRA. Parliament made the Equality Act. Parliament can clarify what it meant. That is how the constitutional system is supposed to work. A court interprets law; Parliament writes it. Guidance written in the shadow of a contested ruling is not a substitute for legislative clarity, and it carries none of Parliament's democratic authority.
How could the EHRC get this right?
The EHRC has a choice. It is not obliged to read the Supreme Court ruling in the most exclusionary way available. Here is what getting it right would look like.
Withdraw the draft guidance. It is draft. It has not yet become statutory guidance. Withdrawing it is not a reversal of anything binding; it is a recognition that guidance written in haste, without adequately weighing the safety data the government's own assessment produced, should not be finalised until it is fit for purpose.
Centre the safety evidence. The Equality Impact Assessment is not a footnote. It is the empirical foundation on which any responsible guidance must be built. Any final guidance needs to explain, in terms that can withstand scrutiny, how directing trans women into men's spaces is consistent with the EHRC's own duty to prevent harm. If it cannot do that, the guidance fails its own test.
Read the ruling accurately. The Supreme Court confirmed that trans people retain protection under the characteristic of gender reassignment. It did not say trans women must be excluded from women's services. It said the terms in the Equality Act refer to biological sex for the purposes of that Act. That leaves considerable room to write guidance that protects trans people, protects non-binary people, and reflects the genuine purpose of shared facilities, which is privacy and safety, not identity policing. The EHRC could write guidance from that space rather than from the most hostile edge of what the ruling might permit.
Call for legislative clarity. The EHRC is the body best placed to tell government that the current legal situation is uncertain, contested, and causing harm. It should be doing exactly that, loudly and on the record, rather than filling the gap with guidance that assumes the most exclusionary reading is the correct one.
Treat harassment of gender non-conforming people as the crisis it is. The Equality Impact Assessment warned not only about trans women but about anyone who does not conform to gender stereotypes. Guidance that creates a policing culture around gender expression puts a much wider group of people at risk: butch women, masculine-presenting people, anyone who does not match the imagined norm. The EHRC's job is to protect people from discrimination and harassment. Guidance that increases harassment is a problem for the EHRC to solve, not create.
What needs to happen now?
The safety data exists. The legal argument for legislative clarification is strong. The constitutional route, Parliament legislating to confirm what it always intended, is available and appropriate. What is missing is the political will to take it.
Trans women are not a threat to anyone's safety. They are women who are themselves at serious risk of violence, and the government's own assessment says so. Guidance that puts them at greater risk, in the name of protecting a reading of equality law that Parliament never intended, is guidance that has got things exactly backwards.
The EHRC was created to stand between vulnerable people and harm. Right now it has an opportunity to do that job. The question is whether it will take it.
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Dr Helen Webberley is a gender specialist, educator, and advocate, and the founder of GenderGP. She writes about gender diversity, trans healthcare, and equality.