On 3rd June we were invite to talk to the Women’s Declaration International, due to personal safety concerns the video was taken down from YouTube. We have published the transcript below and you can access the slides here:
Thank you Jo, Zanne, Bernadette and all the WDI team and to all the attendees for giving up your Saturday afternoon. I attended my first FQT in January this year and to say you are inspiring is an understatement.
My name is XXXXX and I am a very recent activist. I am going to talk about the institutional capture of the Women’s Institute and what we are doing to fight back.
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For those of you who don’t know about the WI, it’s the largest women’s organisation in the UK, it has 180,000 members. It promotes itself as a campaigning organisation and uses words such as ‘sisterhood’ on its website. According to the Constitution membership is open to women who have reached the age of majority.
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It has 3 tiers. Local WIs are largely independent and organise activities for members, according to the WI there are approximately 7,000 local branches. There are 69 federations at roughly county level they act as a conduit between local and national, organise larger annual meetings, and run more activities. At the top is the National Federation of WIs where a Board of Trustees oversees the running, produces policies, and runs national campaigns.
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Every year members can submit resolutions these are scrutinised and three or four are selected to be voted on by members. When the final resolution is selected there is another vote at the Annual Meeting, if it is approved by members, it then is taken up by National to campaign on. It is a slick and efficient process.
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Previous campaigns have included single sex hospital wards, equal pay for equal work and sport for a healthy population, among many others.
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You can join as a full member, which gives you voting rights and access to meetings. Or as a supporter, which there are 2 options, neither supporter options give you access to meetings or voting rights
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There are 3 different types of WIs, in-person, virtual and there are some linked to other organisations.
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The UK arm of the WI was formed in 1915, to help the war effort producing food, the WI morphed after the First World War to encourage “women to take a larger share and interest in the life and work of the community”. Many of the early leaders were part of the suffrage movement, and to a certain extent it was the rural counterpart to it, it wasn’t until 1928 women were given suffrage on the same terms as men.
In its own way it was quite radical, it encouraged women to join an organisation that gave them a training ground to partake in public life. Whilst not overtly political it encouraged and encourages members to be involved with their local community and campaign on the things that matter to them.
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So, back to me. It’s 2013 and I join the WI. I’m one of those people that ends gets roped into things, and in 2015 I end up on the Committee.
About this time a new policy was released from National about transgender members. Until then there were personal questions that committee members had to ask. The new policy said no more questions, we will just let these people join, and at the time I didn’t think too much about it.
Things rumbled on as normal, until 2020 when the pandemic forced everyone to stay at home. We as a local WI had to pivot, from monthly in person meetings to everything online. We were concerned that we would lose members. Amongst all this National instigated a change in WI’s constitutions to allow for online meetings, the change in constitution required a ⅔ vote from all members. Comprehensive briefing documents were sent out and the vote went through.
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We survived 2020 and in 2021 a new Inclusion, Diversity and Equality policy was launched, and I gave it lip service, which looking back was a mistake. Throughout 2021 and 2022 my unease with transgender ideology grew and then one weekend late 2022.
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I ended up down a rabbit hole of Helen Joyce, Rosie Kay, FiLiA videos and podcasts. I ordered Trans by Helen Joyce, I ordered Material Girls by Kathleen Stock, I read both in a matter of days, and when it came out Defending Women’s Spaces by Karen Ingala Smith.
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My attention then turned to the WI,
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Which had increasingly been promoting the membership to trans identified men and celebrating it.
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In December 2022 I roped-in a male friend and you can read part of the email chain on the slide, where he pretended to be a non-transitioning trans woman who wished to join the WI.
I then emailed National and asked (this uses the language I used at the time – apologies)
When did the membership criteria for joining change from women only, to inclusive of trans women after asking a series of embarrassing questions, to accepting anyone who states they are a woman?
Was the membership consulted on this?
I had a non-committal answer, so I re-asked:
Was the membership consulted about the changes to allow trans women to join?
When did the policy change, specifically from asking awkward questions to not?
From this I got the answers that I needed. Members weren’t consulted on the policy changes, there is no need to, members are only consulted on constitutional changes, and I had my eureka moment.
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The NFWI Board of Trustees had created a policy that was and is in direct conflict with the Constitution, they had by sleight of hand allowed men into the WI. But it was worse than that, because the 2021 policy stated that it relied on exemptions contained in the Equality Act, and it was written so the lay person would not realise that those with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment could be legally excluded.
I was quite angry and completely obsessed. I spent a few weeks writing a letter. It requested three things, a moratorium on new trans members, a proper debate about what it means for the WI to accept transgender members and a vote, which would in effect change the Constitution.
It was given to a WI friend (XXXX) to edit and proofread, and she tweaked it to a less angry version.
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I pointed out that legally National could exclude trans members, that the policy conflicted with the constitution and the policy undermined previous campaigns already mentioned.
The WI is a democratic organisation and whilst I may not want trans-identified males to be members, it is up to the whole membership to decide this. I foresaw the debate and vote would be as per the 2020 constitutional change format.
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The letter was sent on 7th February 2023. In it I said I would wait until June before I would go public as I had included a list of resources, I was hoping the Board of Trustees would take the time to read/listen and watch some of these. It included the three books previously mentioned, quite a few podcasts and the Adult Human Female film. It also contained tangential information such as the 1990s Satanic panic phenomena.
In March for International Women’s Day, National hosted an End Violence Against Women seminar in London, followed by attendance at the Million Women Rise march. I registered as an attendee and looked forward to going on 4th March. A couple of my close WI friends knew about my letter and on the trip to London one of my friends messaged me to say that Anneliese Dodds, (Chair of the Labour Party and Shadow Women and Equalities Minister) was going to give the keynote speech, and I knew I had to say something. Labour does not have a good track record on women’s rights and it was a great opportunity.
Ms Dodds gave her speech and, in the Q&As, I asked “how can we trust Labour when Keir Starmer can’t define what a woman is?” You could’ve heard a pin drop, then quickly the Chair of the National Federation of Women’s Institutes shut the question down saying it was irrelevant. I was in stunned surprise, and Anneliese Dodds, did give an answer, although it wasn’t great.
This proved two things to me, National was captured and wasn’t as I previously thought misguided, and they didn’t want to be questioned. One of the attendees shouted the WI had been trans-inclusive since the 1970s, something I’ve seen repeated, and there was a round of applause. Anneliese Dodds didn’t want to use the word sex, saying it was too early and I shouted “we’re oppressed because of our sex”, there was no round of applause. Once this had concluded the woman sat next to me said “well done”. I spent the rest of the morning in a bit of daze surprised at my confidence, thrilled at least one person agreed with me, and very angry at National.
During the march in the afternoon, I saw members of Labour Women’s Declaration, and had a little chat with them. I explained what had happened with Anneliese Dodds and the first thing they said was “were you shut down?” I had seen this happen to high profile women, but then realised this had happened to me. The biggest women’s organisation in the UK is complicit in promoting a men’s rights movement.
After this incident I contacted Jo, and asked if I could use the Declaration and create a Women’s Institute Declaration. This was a great move it linked me with other women in a wider movement and made it sound like more than one person, I also hardened my stance, and have subsequently shifted my position as well.
I wrote another letter directly to the National Chair explaining that self-ID policies, such as WI has, fail women and gave a variety of examples.
On 15th March I received my reply from the WI from my initial letter, it was a complete rejection, and none of the points were addressed. I was told, after asking, the response was not to be made public.
On the 22nd March XXXX and I had a day out together and we discussed the response and concluded the next thing to do was to directly challenge the EDI policy. The letter about the Women’s March was sent the following day, and I didn’t expect a response. I also wanted to create a petition to get the word out and try to gather support. Whilst I didn’t have any evidence, I knew I wasn’t a lone voice and that others must have approached National about this, National were just doing a better job at silencing women than I had realised.
By 29th March I had I created a petition on I-petition stating moratorium, debate and vote, a Twitter handle, a website and a Mumsnet account, and started tweeting and posting on Mumsnet about the petition. It gathered some interest, but overall, I was finding it hard to gain traction – which I had expected.
A friend had told me that this is the kind of thing that gets picked up in the Daily Mail, I agreed, but also thought it’s very niche. On the 16th April there were about 380 signatures on the petition and I had less than 100 followers on Twitter. I was pleased, but wanted to concentrate on writing the next letter pulling apart the EDI policy. My raging anger had subsided and I could concentrate on other things, but my resolve had strengthened.
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On Monday 17th April, the Women’s Rights Network published the “When We Are at Our Most Vulnerable” report covering sexual assaults in UK hospitals. It is shocking read, and I knew that in 1979 the WI had campaigned for single sex hospital wards. I wrote my tweet and went to work. I deliberately don’t have social media on my phone, and I was surprised when I had a text message saying “your post this morning has 403 likes.”
By the time I got home there were hundreds of likes, re-tweets, comments, a bit of a pile on for the WI.
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There were emails from the Daily Mail, LBC, and other media outlets as well as other disgruntled WI members, saying they had been shut down or ignored too. I answered the emails and contacted the Board of Trustees to inform them what had happened. The entire week was a blur as William Hague told us to “get over it”, and I had some great articles in the media. One written by Jo Bartosch in Spiked online called the WI willy inclusive and the CEO of the WI had a response in the Guardian newspaper, reinforcing the transwomen are women mantra, and stating the WI is open to dialogue.
On the Friday 21st April I had a response from my complaint about being silenced, it was very short and simply said “it was not my intention to stifle discussion”. I thought this was derisory, but was also surprised as I was not expecting a reply.
The furore lasted about a week, and from the outside it looks as though it was storm in a teacup, but:
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What I wanted to achieve was finding the other women in the WI who disagree with this policy, and I have. Not many of us yet, but the debate has largely been confined to Twitter. Many WI members are not on social media, these are hard to reach, but also easy to ignore.
I have shone a light on the WI’s under hand policies and that it is captured at National level.
I believe I have forced them to change the EDI policy (for the worse), as on 19th April the CEO said it wouldn’t be changed, and it was re-issued later that month doubling down on the inclusion of TIMs, and removing references to the same sex exemptions in the Equality Act.
But more importantly removing the signature sheet that I specifically criticised.
I have gathered nearly 3,000 signatures on the petition.
I have realised that the TRAs in the WI are as committed as those outside, and have come out with smears about us, although this is on a Facebook group, that I have now got access to. But I believe this is a small minority and most members are open to discussion.
This week I finally managed to send the EDI policy critique and this will be live on the website later this month.
I also sent a letter directly to Melissa Green, the CEO, with multiple signatories asking very direct questions on her Guardian article. This will also be published later this month. I have had an interim reply to this, saying the WI is open to dialogue, and a full response will be forthcoming.
The response to these will then guide my future actions. I’m not expecting the response to be positive, especially as a TIM ‘Petra’ has been included on the Membership Committee as a member representative – and I am intending to write a formal complaint to the Charity’s Commission. I know that one WI member has contacted the EHRC about this, and another intends to.
So hopefully, we will force the WI to either stop trans identified males from joining, or hold a membership vote.
Thank you to everyone here and all the previous speakers, I hope that if you’re like me and only realised recently that there is a full-frontal assault on women’s rights being conducted under the radar you can start to make a difference.
Women's Institute Declaration 