Labour Postpones Women’s Conference Following Supreme Court’s Biological Sex Definition Ruling

Last Updated on May 24, 2025 by Amit Patra

Labour Party took the unprecedented step of cancelling its traditional annual Women’s Conference, generating a huge political storm after last month’s Supreme Court judgment that legally defined “woman” through biological sex and not self-identification.

The delay follows leaked advice to the Labour National Executive Committee that advised against its continued application on grounds of a “real risk of legal challenge” and possible security threats. Transgender women were already accredited by the party according to self-identification policies, though the Supreme Court ruling left it with a requirement to reconsider such practices in their entirety.

Labour’s Women’s Conference, traditionally the day before the conference, hosts hundreds of women MPs, councillors, and activists for discussion and decision-making on policy. The leaked advisory paper explained that the “only legally defensible alternative” would be to limit the event to biological women, and that it would pose the risk of demonstrations and “heightened security risks” if the September 27 event went ahead as planned.

The NEC voted during the night to postpone the conference subject to a wider re-examination of positive action policies, such as suspending elections to the National Labour Women’s Committee and renewing the terms of current members. The party has also departed from all-women shortlists since the ruling, with new advice being that such steps could only be used on “applicants who were biologically female at birth.”

The ruling has been vigorously condemned by both sides of the gender debate. Georgia Meadows, LGBT+ Labour’s trans officer, called it a “blatant attack on trans rights” and an effort to “isolate trans people further within the Labour Party.” The Labour Women’s Declaration campaign did, however, describe the cancellation as a “knee-jerk reaction,” in indignation that “hundreds of women in the Labour Party would be denied from meeting up at conference because the NEC would rather disadvantage all women than exclude the very small number of trans-identified men.”

A Labour spokesman emphasized the party’s commitment to ensuring that all procedures “meet the clear ruling of the Supreme Court” but treat all persons “with dignity and respect,” vowing to make changes necessary “with sensitivity and care.”

This comes in the context of the difficulties surrounding political parties cooperating with each other to reach developing legal definitions with inclusivity as well as party cohesion in a polarized argument over gender rights and women’s space.