The Football Association’s change to its transgender policy, stating that transgender women and girls will no longer be allowed to play affiliated women’s and girls’ football in England and Scotland next season, feels both surprising and expected.
Trans rights groups anticipated that the Supreme Court’s ruling last month would have implications for access to single-sex spaces. Most sports have legislated against transgender athletes’ participation at both the elite and grassroots levels, among them the Rugby Football Union, the England and Wales Cricket Board, British Cycling, UK Athletics and British Triathlon. Within the last three years, World Aquatics, World Athletics and the World Chess Federation have also all banned any athlete not assigned female at birth from competing in the women’s category.
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However, women’s football and the Football Association have taken a different standpoint — until now. The FA’s previous stance was to honour the gender identity of transgender women who wanted to play in women’s leagues without sacrificing fair and safe competition, through a testosterone-suppression model to ensure blood testosterone levels remained “within the natal female range” and that assessments of safety and fair competition were kept.
In an addendum last month, the governing body said that transgender women who had undergone male puberty would continue to be allowed to play in the women’s game as long as they reduced their testosterone levels to 5 nmol/L for at least 12 months. The Athletic understands that 90 per cent of the transgender women competing in FA-affiliated leagues returned figures significantly below that level.
In short, the FA operated on a case-by-case basis, with the FA’s equality manager and relevant medical representatives able to step in to help players find leagues and teams better-suited to their abilities if fairness was compromised.
That policy had been in place for more than a decade, and this season enabled around 20 transgender women to play in women’s leagues.
Women’s football, both recently and historically, has made tolerance, community and acceptance a vital part of its identity, particularly in the face of establishment authority and gender policing. The game’s history is rooted in protest and the battle for acceptance, owing not only to the 1921 FA ban but the systemic prejudices, financial and sociological, that continue to hamper its growth.
The FA — under its tagline “For All” — worked for years to include transgender women in the women’s grassroots game, standing firm in its policy in the face of increased external pressure. It did not move to act immediately after the Supreme Court ruling, and is understood to have done so after consultation with senior-level King’s Counsels who advised the governing body to change its policies.
The “external pressure” is important here.
Just as gender critical feminists have been clear in their desires, so, too, have those in women’s football.
After scoring in City’s 1-1 Women’s Super League draw with Everton on 20th April, Manchester City midfielder Kerstin Casparij kissed a wristband the colour of the trans flag and posted the photo to Instagram. The caption read: “My goal today was dedicated to all my trans siblings, who’ve had an incredibly tough & heartbreaking week. You have all been on my mind and in my heart, you deserve so much more than what this government & society is giving you. I’m so incredibly proud of the trans existence within the queer community, and I’m proud of all trans women – you are women no matter what anyone says.”
The Women’s Super League (WSL) and international players, including Vivianne Miedema, Esme Morgan and Sandy MacIver, liked the post.
In 2022, England captain Leah Williamson also spoke in favour of trans inclusion in women’s sport.
“Once upon a time, it was foreign for a girl to play football and I know that trans people experience (discrimination) in their day-to-day life, let alone when they want to step into something that they really love,” she told The Independent. “It’s about normalising what should be normalised.”
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No high-profile WSL player has publicly criticised the FA for facilitating trans participation in football. That says something, both on their thoughts and the scale of this issue, when considering how swiftly players have spoken out on so many other controversies.
The history of women’s football continues to shape a fanbase constructing its mores in real time, but values of LGBTQ+ inclusion and safety have long been baked into the women’s game. Defiance and resistance of those who sought to stop women from playing football are part of the sport’s DNA. A community that has fought for its seat at the table always seemed loath to put another minority through the same.
So, where are calls to ban trans participation in women’s football coming from? It doesn’t feel like they are from the majority inside the game. Watching the reactions over social media almost reflected a straight split of opinion between long-time followers of women’s football and those with no clear connection to it. Painting the issue in overly simplistic terms like ‘banning people born male from women’s sports’, with all the connotations and assumptions that statement carries, brushes over the legislative nuances and culture of women’s football, inspiring misinformed responses.
That the quest to protect the rights of women and girls has seemingly spoken over those building women’s football from the ground up has a special kind of irony. Where are the swathes of mediocre male footballers transitioning because they haven’t been good enough to make it in the men’s game? Why the preoccupation with whether transgender women are stealing places from women born female when women are more likely to have their practices curbed by men’s and boys’ teams kicking them off their training pitches? Why the silence on the myriad other ways women and girls face exclusion in women’s football — ways that are statistically far more meaningful than trans participation?
Pride Sports, which runs the Football v Homophobia and Football v Transphobia campaigns, noted that “there remains football-specific, peer-reviewed research or evidence that shows the existing policies constitute a safety risk”. The FA’s January 2025 update had 5.5million females playing football, with 2.8million of those over 16. The 20 transgender women made up 0.0007 per cent of that population, meaning that the majority of women playing at the grassroots level would have been completely unaffected by their presence.
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The 20 players, though, will now have to prepare for the profound impact of this ruling. When so many places are actively hostile towards transgender women, now a place in which those transgender women felt comfortable and accepted, and reaped the mental and physical health benefits of sport, is gone too.
(Top photo: Visionhaus / Getty Images)
