On November 1 and 2, 2025, a storm of protest and debate swept across Britain, ignited by the decision of Cambridge University’s Newnham College to continue admitting students who were born male but self-identify as female. This bold move came in direct defiance of an April 16, 2025, UK Supreme Court ruling that clarified the legal definition of 'woman' as meaning only a biological woman under the Equality Act 2010. The resulting uproar has thrown the nation’s ongoing clash over sex, gender, and the law into sharp relief, drawing in campaigners, students, legal experts, and activists from both sides of the debate.
According to The Mail on Sunday, Newnham College—Cambridge’s oldest women-only college and alma mater to figures like Germaine Greer, Emma Thompson, and Clare Balding—has now formalized a gender policy stating it is open to all 'female' applicants, including those born male. The college, which has accepted trans-identified males since 2017, has now enshrined this practice in a policy document, despite the Supreme Court’s recent, unanimous clarification that, for the purposes of single-sex spaces and services, 'woman' refers strictly to biological women.
Principal Alison Rose, in a letter to students seen by The Mail on Sunday, insisted that the new policy was 'cleared by the college's lawyers' and would ensure Newnham remains 'inclusive.' She explained, 'We are open to all female applicants. We will consider at the admissions stage those applicants who hold a form of formal identification as female on a current passport, driving licence, birth certificate or gender recognition certificate.' This communication followed a tense meeting with students on October 13, where, according to two attendees, Rose described the Supreme Court’s ruling as a 'mess' and said the college 'is not a single-sex space.' She also reportedly assured students that there would be 'no change' to the college’s admissions policies from previous years—policies which have permitted trans women to study at Newnham.
Yet, the college’s stance has not gone unchallenged. Furious campaigners have pledged to report Newnham to the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Charity Commission, alleging a breach of equalities law. Maya Forstater, chief executive of the charity Sex Matters, told The Mail on Sunday, 'Following the Supreme Court's clarification that the Equality Act 2010 follows the ordinary meaning of the words male and female, the college should have been urgently reconsidering its policy to bring it back into line with the law. Instead it has been looking around for loopholes. This is fruitless and foolish.' Forstater confirmed that formal complaints would be made to the relevant authorities.
Equality lawyer Audrey Ludwig, a member of Legal Feminist, echoed these concerns, warning that the college’s decision was 'at serious risk of being determined as unlawful.' The college’s position is further complicated by its hiring guidelines for research fellows, which, in contrast to its admissions policy, define women strictly as those assigned female at birth—explicitly aligning with the Supreme Court’s interpretation.
Newnham’s leadership, however, maintains that their approach is legally defensible. During the October 13 meeting, Rose and her admissions tutors reportedly outlined a legal 'loophole' they plan to use: a provision in Schedule 12 of the Equality Act 2010, which allows opposite-sex students to attend single-sex educational settings in 'exceptional' circumstances. Critics, including Forstater, argue that this exception was never intended to permit the routine admission of biological males to women-only colleges, but rather to cover rare cases, such as a girls’ school admitting a limited number of boys to its sixth form.
The controversy at Newnham has not remained confined to Cambridge. On November 1, protests erupted across Britain as women’s rights groups demanded the full implementation of the Supreme Court’s ruling. According to GB News, campaigners gathered in cities nationwide, with Sex Matters campaign director Fiona McAnena declaring, 'The ruling is perfectly simple and clear—people just need to find a bit of backbone.' The protests, which reflect the country’s ongoing tensions over the legal definition of 'woman' and the rights of transgender people, have drawn support from gender-critical activists and those worried about the erosion of single-sex spaces.
The following day, the debate intensified outside the Scottish Parliament, where opposing rallies faced off over the Supreme Court’s decision. As reported by The Herald, the gender-critical campaign group Women Won't Wheesht, along with allied organizations, called for the immediate implementation of the court’s ruling at a demonstration outside Holyrood. They were met by a counter-protest organized by Resisting Transphobia in Edinburgh (RTiE) and Trans Kids Deserve Better (TKDB), with trans rights activists waving Pride flags and holding signs such as 'Please live and let live' and 'If you care about women fight abusers not identities.'
The Supreme Court’s April ruling, as summarized by The Herald, stated that, under the Equality Act, the term 'sex' refers to a person’s biology at birth, regardless of any Gender Recognition Certificate. However, new legal guidance has yet to be issued by the UK Government, leaving a legal gray area in which institutions like Newnham College are making their own interpretations. The demonstration at Holyrood marked 199 days since the Supreme Court decision, with parallel protests outside the Welsh and UK Parliaments. Several hundred people attended the peaceful protests in Edinburgh, and police reported no arrests.
Counter-protesters at Holyrood argued that the Supreme Court’s ruling would lead to policies they describe as 'demeaning and dehumanising for trans people.' An RTiE spokesperson urged supporters to 'resist hateful attempts to legislate trans people out of public life,' adding, 'Show Terfs [trans-exclusionary radical feminists] that they cannot divide us. Resist the far-right’s misogynist attempts to control women’s and trans people’s bodies.'
Back at Cambridge, the debate remains deeply personal for many students. Postgraduate student Maeve Halligan, co-founder of the Society of Women at the university, told The Mail on Sunday, 'The category of woman is being totally usurped, hijacked and attacked. Sexism is written into the history of Cambridge University and now it's come back in disguise. This historic college has some of the most famous alumni, such as Germaine Greer. I can only imagine what she would think if she saw what this college's new admissions policy was now.'
With legal guidance still pending and the country sharply divided, institutions like Newnham College find themselves at the heart of a national reckoning over the meaning of sex, gender, and inclusion. As campaigners on both sides dig in, the coming months are likely to see further legal challenges, campus debates, and public demonstrations—each echoing the same, urgent question: who gets to define what it means to be a woman in Britain today?
