Mick Hartley

With the decline of Stonewall, there’s a gap in the market for trans advocacy. Step forward Gendered Intelligence. Jill Foster in the Telegraph:

Now, as most government departments and other public bodies – including the BBC, Channel 4 and Ofcom – distance themselves from Stonewall’s controversial Diversity Champions Scheme, it seems there is a gap to fill for organisations seeking to show that their workplaces are sufficiently diverse and equal. And Gendered Intelligence appears to be stepping into the breach.

The work is clearly proving lucrative. The organisation – which gained charity status in 2019 – charges up to £2,215 for a full-day trans and non-binary inclusion course for up to a maximum of 15 people. It also charges up to £1,515 per three-and-a-half hour “awareness” session, which helped raise over £251,500 from training in 2023-24, compared with £194,000 in 2022-23 and £166,000 in 2021-22.

Money has also been pouring in from other sources. Last year, it secured nearly £1m in grants and looks set to beat that figure this year. In the past 12 months alone, it has already received a £300,000 grant from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, one of the UK’s largest grant-giving charities, £275,000 from Three Guineas Trust, one of the Sainsbury family’s charitable trusts, and £550,000 from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, which has received more than £1m in government funding. The group’s gross income has soared from just over £842,000 in 2019-20 to over £1.4m last year, including more than £158,000 in government contracts.

Nice work if you can get it. The demand for “inclusivity training” continues, from institutions that haven’t read the writing on the wall.

“The fingerprints of Gendered Intelligence are all over sports policies that claimed trans-identifying men should be allowed into women’s categories”, says Fiona McAnena, the director of campaigns at sex-based rights charity Sex Matters. “Sport England paid Gendered Intelligence to develop changing rooms guidance as late as 2020. The harmful notion that men who said they were women were entitled to be in women’s changing rooms was spread, funded by public money and with official endorsement. Women’s needs were not considered.”

Former Olympian marathon runner and women’s rights campaigner, Mara Yamauchi, agrees. “Gendered Intelligence have had an appalling influence on fair and safe sport for females,” she says. “They have promoted the participation of males in the female category. By downplaying the massive physical advantages males have over females, they have misled people about scientific facts. And they have received large amounts of public money – which must stop.”