by Joanna Marchong, investigations campaign manager
At last, some sanity from the Supreme Court: ‘woman’ means woman.
In an age where public debate has seemed increasingly unmoored from reality, the Supreme Court has thrown down a welcome anchor. In a ruling that cuts through the fog of gender ideology, the justices confirmed that the word woman, as used in the Equality Act 2010, refers to biological sex, not identity, not feelings, but plain, biological fact.
The legal implications are significant. The political implications, more so. But the financial implications, and they are vast, have received far less attention.
For years, government departments, councils, quangos and publicly funded bodies have been guided not by science or statutory obligation but by pressure from activist groups. They’ve lavished public money on policies that ignore biological reality in favour of ideological fashion.
Take the taxpayer-funded obsession with gender-neutral toilets. A recent investigation by the TaxPayers’ Alliance found that 45 councils spent more than £600,000 on such facilities. Arun District Council alone spent almost £400,000 on just 14 unisex cubicles. Staff raised concerns about safety and dignity, warning that vulnerable women and girls might be retraumatised by being forced to share space with men. One woman from the council said: “I am unhappy that our safety and dignity has not been fully considered in this decision. I also feel strongly that those women and girls impacted by male violence will be traumatised if forced to share space with males”. Another one summed it up bluntly: “There is a men's toilet and unisex toilets, but there is no ladies’ toilet.”
The same council recently warned that it’s heading towards effective bankruptcy. The priorities, it seems, were never financial resilience or basic service delivery, but ideological virtue.
Meanwhile, hundreds of public sector organisations have queued up to join Stonewall’s “Diversity Champions” scheme, a programme where institutions pay handsomely to be told how to align their HR policies with Stonewall’s worldview. In 2022–23 alone, Stonewall received over £1.1 million from taxpayer-funded bodies: more than half a million through the scheme itself, a further £500,000 in grants, and £71,000 for conferences and workshops.
The message was always the same: rewrite job descriptions, introduce gender-neutral facilities, monitor pronoun use, and don’t ask too many questions. Millions have been spent for the privilege of being told to ignore biological reality.
It’s a symptom of a wider malaise in the modern public sector: mission creep. Councils and civil servants, once focused on delivering essential services, have drifted into the realm of social engineering. Instead of emptying bins and fixing potholes, they run diversity audits, rebrand signage, and debate gender lexicons. The consequences aren’t just cultural, they’re financial. Budgets are strained not by necessity, but by ideological indulgence.
That indulgence can no longer be justified. The Supreme Court’s decision is not just a legal clarification. It is a line in the sand. Public bodies can no longer hide behind confused definitions or activist groupthink. The law is now clear, and public institutions must adjust accordingly.
They could start by returning to first principles: deliver core services, protect single-sex spaces, and stop wasting public money indulging ideological whims.