Cambridge University’s oldest women-only college has caused outrage by deciding to continue admitting biological men who ‘self-identify’ as female, in defiance of a Supreme Court ruling.
Newnham College, which has feminist Germaine Greer, actress Emma Thompson and presenter Clare Balding among its alumni, has created a gender policy stating it is open to all ‘female’ applicants – including those born as men.
Although it has been accepting trans-identified males since 2017, its new policy document enshrines their ability to access the single-sex space.
On Saturday night, furious campaigners pledged to report the college to the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Charity Commission over a possible breach of equalities law.
They say the stance defies April’s Supreme Court ruling in which five justices unanimously said ‘woman’ means a biological woman and that a trans woman does not have the right to use a women-only space or service.
Postgraduate student Maeve Halligan, who co-founded a single-sex feminist society at the university, the Society of Women, said the decision shows Newnham is ‘no longer an all-female college’.
Yet in a letter to students seen by The Mail on Sunday, college principal Alison Rose said the policy had been ‘cleared by the college’s lawyers’ and would ensure it stayed ‘inclusive’.
Maya Forstater, chief executive of charity Sex Matters, said: ‘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.’
She confirmed the college would be reported to the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Charity Commission.
Equality lawyer Audrey Ludwig, a member of the group Legal Feminist, said the college’s decision was ‘at serious risk of being determined as unlawful’.
Ms Halligan, who is at Lucy Cavendish College and founded the Society of Women with fellow students Thea Sewell and Serena Worley, said: ‘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.’
Newnham’s admission policy for students is also in contrast to its hiring guidelines for research fellows, which say: ‘Following the Supreme Court’s decision in For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers [2025], when we refer to ‘women’ we mean those assigned female at birth.’
Yet Ms Rose, a former diplomat, confirmed the college’s admissions policy in an email to students last week. She wrote: ‘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.’
Her letter came two weeks after she held a meeting with Newnham members to discuss the college’s admissions policy on October 13. According to two students who attended, Ms Rose called the Supreme Court ruling a ‘mess’ and said the college ‘is not a single-sex space’.
She allegedly repeatedly stressed in front of some 30 students there would be ‘no change’ to the admissions policies from previous years, which has seen trans women allowed to study at the elite college.
Ms Rose and two admissions tutors are then said to have laid out a legal ‘loophole’ they were planning to use to continue admitting trans women.
According to Ms Halligan and Ms Worley, the tutors said they are relying on a niche exception in Schedule 12 of the Equality Act 2010 that allows opposite sex students to attend single-sex educational settings in ‘exceptional’ circumstances.
But Ms Forstater said that while Schedule 12 allows a girls’ school to admit a limited number of boys in the sixth-form, ‘no school or college can safely, fairly or lawfully admit boys and men as if they were girls and women’.
