Mick Hartley

Talking of Raquel Rosario Sanchez – quoted as one of the attendees at yesterday’s UCL meeting – she’s finally won her case against Bristol University’s student union.

Back in September 2021:

A feminist student group at Bristol University is set to launch a legal challenge claiming discrimination after the student union sanctioned them for running women-only meetings.

The group, Women Talk Back, has launched a crowdfunding campaign in an attempt to sue the union after the group denied a transgender woman entry to a women-only event.

Union officials have demanded that the group’s chairwoman, Raquel Rosario Sánchez, resign and have barred her from joining the committee of any other affiliated group at the university for two years.

They have banned the group from conducting women-only events and have insisted that all members of Women Talk Back undergo “diversity and inclusivity training” that will focus on the importance of allowing men into previously women-only events.

And now:

Feminist student societies can exclude transgender women, university students’ union chiefs have admitted after “landmark” legal action.

Bristol Students’ Union (SU) caused anger by disciplining Women Talk Back (WTB), its own feminist group, for excluding male-born trans women from talks on rape and sexual assault.

The society had hosted women-only meetings at the University of Bristol to discuss male violence and argued that the presence of trans women could make attendees fearful of speaking out. However, a student later complained….

Now, Bristol SU has backed down and admitted that “affiliated clubs and societies may lawfully offer single-sex services and be constituted as single-sex associations” under the Equality Act.

In an out-of-court settlement this month, the students’ union confirmed that it “understands that Women Talk Back was seeking to operate in this way” and “WTB could, should they wish to do so, re-apply for affiliation to the Union on that basis”.

Bristol SU’s statement added: “In doing so, WTB would set out in their constitution the Equality Act 2010 definition of ‘women’ being ‘a female of any age’ instead of the byelaws definition.”

This marked an about-turn for Bristol SU chiefs, who had initially told the society that their byelaw definition of women, “all who self-define as women”, meant they “do not allow a group to restrict their membership to cisgender women” so they could not be single-sex.

On Saturday, WTB hailed the “landmark” outcome for setting a legal precedent for universities across the UK which “make it easier for women like us in academia to breathe”.

Ms Rosario Sanchez, who is also a PhD student at the University of Bristol’s Centre for Gender and Violence Research, told The Telegraph: “Trans activists in academia thought we would wither away if only they bullied and intimidated us enough. But we refused to cower, disassemble or quit.

“Through our experience, we’ve inspired the first recognition of single-sex societies as lawful in academia. Our story is about young women using their voice to make positive change that benefits all students, regardless of sex.”

Good for her.

Though why such an obvious requirement a single-sex spaces for women should need to be fought for is another matter…