Opinion: Gender against prosperity

In a landmark ruling that has sent shockwaves through academic and activist circles alike, the UK Supreme Court has determined that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act refer exclusively to biological women and biological sex. The unanimous decision by five judges represents a significant victory for self-described “gender-critical” activists while creating profound concerns for transgender rights and broader understandings of gender as a social construct.

What we are witnessing is not merely a legal technicality but a perilous manifestation of state power inscribing biological determinism (the idea that a person’s characteristics are primarily determined by their biological makeup, rather than environmental factors or social influences) into law, thereby creating categories of legitimate and illegitimate bodies within civic space. This legal codification of biological determinism directly threatens our collective prosperity by establishing precedents that can be weaponised across borders and contexts.

The celebration from groups like For Women Scotland reveals how biological determinism has become a rallying point for diverse groups – conservatives, certain feminist factions, and religious organisations – who might otherwise share little ideological common ground. This coalition demonstrates what we’ve observed in our research on populist movements: the deployment of gender norms as political currency that can mobilise heterogeneous groups toward specific political objectives.

This ruling does not exist in isolation but forms part of a coordinated global assault on gender-expansive understandings of humanity. Within the same 48-hour period, Turkey witnessed an echo of the same biopower (the concept of political power over bodies) through heated debates about controlling women’s reproductive choices; by determining what would be the ‘normal’ birth and how women should be ‘encouraged’ (if not forced) for vaginal birth against c-section. In the United States, the ongoing battles over abortion rights continue to exemplify how biomedical power becomes codified in law. In Hungary, Russia, and Brazil, aggressive pronatalist policies seek to force women into reproductive roles defined by the state. The systematic exclusion of trans women from womanhood through legal mechanisms is not exempt from pronatalist measures – both rely on state power to define, restrict, and control bodies based on reproductive capacity.

These are not coincidental developments but rather interconnected manifestations of a transnational assertion of biopower that threatens prosperity by narrowing human potential to biological functions. Both deploy state power to regulate bodies according to reproductive capacity rather than recognising the full humanity of individuals. Both sacrifice human potential on the altar of biological determinism. When bodies are regulated based on reproductive capacity – whether excluding trans women from women’s spaces or pressuring cisgender women to reproduce – we witness the same logic of control at work.

Further, when policy prioritizes categorical clarity over lived experience, we see biopower operating at its most efficient – sacrificing complex human realities for bureaucratic simplicity.

The government’s statement welcoming the “clarity and confidence” for women and service providers signals how biological determinism is framed not as restriction but as protection. This rhetorical framing – the strong protecting the vulnerable – echoes precisely the masculinist restoration we’ve documented in our research on gender politics. 

When trans women with gender recognition certificates cannot be legally acknowledged as women in certain contexts despite having been acknowledged as such in others, we see the law creating impossible subjects – recognised in some spaces but not others, legal in some contexts but not all.

As scholars and citizens, we must recognise that biological determinism is not merely an abstract ideology but an instrument of control with real consequences for human lives and bodies. While gender-critical activists celebrate this ruling as a victory, prosperity of those who are immediately affected is at risk. We do not hear enough about the alarming rise in suicide rates among transgender children and adolescents. This “exclusive” prosperity – one that protects only those bodies deemed legitimate by the state – is no prosperity at all when it drives vulnerable young people to despair. True prosperity must be inclusive or it is merely privilege masquerading as progress.

Dr Sertaç Sehlikoglu is a social anthropologist specialising in subjectivity, gender, and sexuality in the Middle East. Her work often focuses on the intangible aspects of human subjectivity that enable humans to change and transform social life, such as intimacy, agency, desire, and imaginaries. 
 

The views expressed are the author’s own and do not represent a UCL institutional stance on the issue.

Photo by Thiago Rocha on Unsplash