The Scottish Football Association is to ban transgender women from participating in women’s football after updating its guidelines.
From next season only biological women will be able to take part in women’s competitive football, a term that applies to matches from under-13s up.
Current rules in Scotland allow for transgender women to compete under their affirmed gender identity on a case-by-case basis, and dependent on their levels of testosterone.
A decision was taken to change that policy at an SFA board meeting last Thursday and steps including legal and governance compliance are being worked through by the organisation. There are no trans women footballers registered in the women’s game in Scotland and the SFA is understood also to be developing new plans for increasing LGBTQ+ participation.
The change comes a week after the UK supreme court ruled that the term “woman” in the Equality Act refers only to a biological woman. The SFA’s decision is likely to prove controversial, with the supreme court ruling a response to a decision by the Scottish government to extend the definition of “woman” to include trans women. The Scottish first minister, John Swinney, this week urged sporting bodies to wait for guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission before revisiting their policies on inclusion.
This month, before the supreme court verdict, the English FA confirmed it would continue to allow trans women to play in the women’s game provided they exhibited low levels of testosterone for 12 months. This decision is understood to affect 20 registered transgender players in England, with the FA reserving the right to consult a transgender and nonbinary eligibility committee should there be concerns over eligibility.