The Women’s Equality Party has died. Or has it? On 17 November, 78 per cent of the membership of the party voted on a motion to dissolve the organisation, citing financial difficulties and a changed political landscape than the one they entered almost ten years ago. Mandu Read, the current and final leader, said that donations to the party dropped after COVID-19, which made the party’s future unsustainable. A statement by the Executive Committee read: “Today’s decision took enormous courage. Choosing to let go of our party when our mission remains so urgent was never going to be easy. But it is precisely because this work is so important that we had to know when to call time.” They decided to close the party because the work it was doing was so urgent and important? 

These words appear to be euphemisms obscuring the real problem: that the Women’s Equality Party simply lost women and could not defend their rights at a vital point in British feminist history. Almost since its inception, WEP struggled to grasp one of the thorniest issues maiming the global women’s liberation movement — the sex and “gender identity” debate. For years the party squashed dissenting voices supportive of sex-based rights whilst incentivising trans rights campaigners.

When tensions reached a boiling point, the leadership was forced to consult its members about whether they would formally endorse sex self-identification (whether male people can become female people by stating the incantation: “I identify as a woman”), rather than impose it by stealth. The results were damning: 71 per cent of the membership voted in support for single-sex spaces and services. 

Instead of accepting the voice of the membership that paid their very comfortable salaries (as leader, Reid had three separate deputies whereas her Labour and Conservative counterparts had to make do with only one deputy each) the Women’s Equality Party shelved the results of the consultation, hiding it for years.

I spent over three hours on the phone listening to these women and I heard no glee or rejoicing in the Women’s Equality Party’s demise

Furthermore, the Women’s Equality Party got rid of their spokeswoman, academic philosopher Heather Brunskill-Evans, over what she claims was her vocal opposition objections to the unnecessary medicalisation of children who reject their biological sex. The previous party leader, Sophie Walker, who oversaw the internal takeover of transactivist campaigners within the party and the targeting of feminists who felt hounded out, eventually changed her mind, writing to Reid pleading for her to save the political party from the brink: 

Dear Mandu, I’m writing to ask you please to scrap your proposed motion on self-ID to the Women’s Equality Party conference this weekend. I think you’re making a terrible mistake and wish you would reconsider…“Woman” is not a costume, or a feeling in a man’s head. My great fear as Leader of WEP was that if a motion for self-ID passed, I simply would not be able to do my job. I don’t know how you write policies for women, if anyone can be a woman.

That open letter, from leader to leader, was published two years ago. A lot has happened with regard to the sex and “gender identity” debate. A part of me wonders why the Women’s Equality Party could not understand that this virulent conflict presented an opportunity to demonstrate genuine leadership — to say the unpopular thing at the time not because it was easy, but because it was the right thing to do. That could have been powerful for the party, for the political landscape, and for the women’s liberation movement. Instead, WEP appeared to have cowered under the weight of their own self-perceived importance. 

Today, the takeover of the Women’s Equality Party is complete. The WEP dissolved, trans rights campaigners from within the now-defunct party have launched their own version: The Equality Party … no need to pretend this is about women anymore. Their website and messaging appear to be a carbon copy of the political party that transactivism killed. This reincarnation, launched on 1 December, is about “empowering every voice”, arguing: 

Our goal is a more inclusive, equitable society with diverse voices in decision-making at all levels. We are a feminist party that believes women’s equality benefits everyone, as government and other systems that impact our lives are designed to favour a small, privileged elite — a patriarchy. We seek to transform these patriarchal structures to create fairness and opportunity for all, leading to gender, race, disability, age, LGBTQIA+ and religious equality.

These dynamics — in which male people seethe with resentment at the fact that female people are allowed to have anything solely for themselves — are ancient. When I was a teenager reading history books about the women’s liberation movement, I always used to wonder why the women already inside these organisations let it happen. Did they fight back? 

To understand, I asked three women deeply involved in the Women’s Equality Party since its inception and who found themselves on the outskirts looking in, as the executive committee put other interests other than women’s interests at the forefront of this political project. 

The women spoke with me about party assembly meetings in which everybody was given five minutes to address the floor but the clock only seemed to run down for the women who advocated sex-based rights, whilst transactivist campaigners were given the liberty to spout their views for over twenty minutes. They spoke of strategy meetings in which they expressed concern regarding the erosion of single-sex services and urged caution regarding the medicalisation of children who reject their sex, but were reprimanded by party leaders telling them “to shut up” in front of the entire room, with one woman stating: 

I was in a meeting with the leadership in London and we were speaking about our activism; as in, what we were focusing our energy on at the moment. I spoke about the transing of kids and single sex-services. When I spoke up, I was told to stop talking. The leader glared at me and told me to shut up. This was in front of everybody else, and I was not allowed to continue speaking. Nobody has apologised to me for that and nobody intervened on my behalf. It was shocking.

I spent over three hours on the phone listening to these women and I heard no glee or rejoicing in the Women’s Equality Party’s demise. Instead, I heard sadness, I heard disappointment, and I heard grief. They felt duped and hard done by.

Moreover, the women had hoped that the Women’s Equality Party could lead the way forward on the sex and “gender identity” debate that was compassionate, sensible, and evidence-based. But felt that women in leadership positions were more interested in being full-time “professional feminists,” with the party becoming “a revolving door for middle-class women with fancy titles which sounded great on their CVs.” 

A founding member who spoke with me did not want to be named. She had a working-class background and worked in women and children’s services in very deprived areas. But she felt that the party did not advocate for the vulnerable women who use those services (such as working-class women, women on benefits, women who are carers, and WASPI women). She felt that “it was more about getting on the media and getting on the press” rather than about “the real thing that women struggle with” so, she argued, it was not fit for purpose from the get-go. What did she make of the death of the Women’s Equality Party? She said: 

It is a shame that the only real attempt to create a political party that explicitly advocated for women’s rights deteriorated so quickly. But it was inevitable because the leadership decided to become irrelevant to the lives of everyday women, like you and me. I am sad about its demise, and I feel more cynical about politics now than I did before.

Campaigner Ali Ceesay was the spokeswoman for the WEP Sex-Based Rights Caucus, an internal pressure group advocating for the lives and experiences of female people (inside a feminist political party). I asked her how she felt now that it was all over and done, and she replied: 

I feel devastated for women. You, me, all of us. Because women’s situation has gotten worse since the WEP was founded, for example when it comes to austerity cuts harming working-class women. We have Police Chiefs saying that male violence against women and girls is a national emergency but the Women’s Equality Party has not been a part of the solution for women. 

It may have been a vanity project for some of the leadership, but this was not a vanity project for the members, who had a lot of knowledge and expertise and were sensible women who wanted to help other women. They were desperate for their daughters to have better lives than they had, and they have been let down.

Academic Heather Brunskill-Evans, the Women’s Equality Party former Spokeswoman on Violence Against Women, went through a Kafkaesque investigation following complaints about her feminist views. She went into the investigation thinking that she could “trust the process and that reason would prevail.” Instead, the investigation found against her, even though the leadership of the party would go on to do an about-turn and advocate the same positions that she was sanctioned for. She said:

The men who defamed me; calling me a nazi, a transphobe and far-right never faced any repercussions or faced any sanctions, whereas I was formally investigated for raising the alarm about concerns that the leadership later went on to support, like the importance of taking a careful approach on the transing of children. Today, I feel vindicated that my concerns have been proven correct, for example with the Cass Report. But I also feel sad, hurt, battered, and bruised in my experience within the Women’s Equality Party. The lesson in all of this is that if you give up women’s rights, any feminist political party is simply doomed to fail.