TheWomen's Declaration International (WDI), formerly theWomen's Human Rights Campaign (WHRC), is a Britishanti-transgender advocacy group with branches in other countries. WDI has published aDeclaration on Women's Sex-Based Rights,[1] and has developed model legislation to restrict transgender rights that has been used in state legislatures in the United States.[2]
The organisation has been described asgender-critical,[3]anti-trans,[4][5][6][7][8][9]anti-LGBTQ,[4][10]anti-gender,[11][12]trans-exclusionary,[13]trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF),[14][15] and as ahate group,[16] and in several countries the group has been linked to thefar right.[17][18][19] WDI has voiced support for thepersecution of transgender people under the second Trump administration and WDI president Kara Dansky wrote thatExecutive Order 14168 is "rational policy."[20] TheSouthern Poverty Law Center considers WDI part of an "anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience network".[4][10] The largest U.S. feminist organisation, theNational Organization for Women, described WDI as "anti-trans bigots disguised as feminists."[21]
The Women's Human Rights Campaign (WHRC) was founded bySheila Jeffreys and Heather Brunskell-Evans.[7] In February 2018, Brunskell-Evans had been removed from her role asWomen's Equality Party spokesperson and resigned from the party after the party opened an investigation into comments she made to theBBC about the parents of transgender children.[22] In March 2018, Jeffreys attended a "Transgenderism and the War on Women" event at theParliament of the United Kingdom sponsored by Conservative MPDavid Davies, and during her presentation, said: "when men claim to be women... and parasitically occupy the bodies of the oppressed, they speak for the oppressed. They become to be recognised as the oppressed. There's no space for women's liberation".[23]
Mauro Cabral Grinspan, Ilana Eloit,David Paternotte and Mieke Verloo described WDI as "one of the key players of anti-trans feminism at a global scale".[5]
In March 2019, the WHRC launched theDeclaration on Women's Sex-Based Rights in New York,[1] co-authored by Maureen O'Hara, Jeffreys and Brunskell-Evans.[24] In 2019, the group appeared to "primarily exist as the organisation behind the declaration", according toPink News.[25]
In advance of a planned event at theScottish Parliament hosted by MSPJenny Marra and MSPJoan McAlpine in November 2019, the group described the declaration as intended to be "a statement on the importance of keeping the current sex based definition of woman".[1] The document refers totrans women as "men who claim a female gender identity".[1][25] TheAssociation for Women's Rights in Development has said the declaration co-opts the "Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) framework to claim that 'sex' is an immutable category and 'gender' is not a legitimate concept",[26] and the"'sex-based' rhetoric misuses concepts of sex and gender to push a deeply discriminatory agenda".[13] Legal scholar and human rights expert Sandra Duffy described the declaration's concept of "sex-based rights" as "a fiction with the pretense of legality".[27]
The advocacy groupsLGB Alliance andWomen's Liberation Front (WoLF) signed the declaration in 2019,[25] while theEquality Network and theScottish Trans Alliance criticised it.[1]Emma Ritch, executive director of the feminist policy organisationEngender said that "this so-called ‘declaration on women’s sex-based rights’ [...] doesn’t include women’s rights to housing, pay equality, access to justice, social security, education, or political representation. When it talks about violence against women, freedom of expression, and children's rights it does so entirely through the warped lens of antipathy towards trans people"[25] and that "trans rights and women's rights are consistent with one another, and we call on Holyrood to continue to shape legislation and scrutinise policy in order to uphold the rights of all women, including trans women, in Scotland".[1]Scottish Women's Aid said "We are immensely saddened that the Scottish Parliament, an institution we value and care so much about, would be used by those seeking to stigmatise and discriminate against trans women".[28]
The group says it is "female-only" and theDeclaration on Women's Sex-Based Rights was created to "lobby nations to maintain language protecting women and girls on the basis of sex rather than gender or gender identity".[24] In December 2021, the group changed its name to Women's Declaration International.[29]
The "supporting organizations" that have signed WDI's manifesto includeWomen's Liberation Front,The LGB Alliance,Deep Green Resistance, European Network of Migrant Women, Lesbian Rights Alliance,Womad, andLet Women Speak, and websites Spinster andOvarit.[30]
In 2021, the group called for the repeal of theGender Recognition Act in a submission to the Women and Equalities Select Committee for an inquiry chaired by Tory MPCaroline Nokes.[7]
ForInternational Women's Day in 2021, WHRC Norway (now WDI Norway) proposed the slogans "No toheresy in primary schools, girls and women do not have a penis" and "Only women are women," that were accused of being hateful and transphobic by the established feminist organisations.[31] Christine Marie Jentoft, an advisor on gender diversity at theNorwegian Organisation for Sexual and Gender Diversity, described WHRC as ahate group that works to deprive transgender people of autonomy and rights.[16] Gender studies professorElisabeth L. Engebretsen described the group's Norwegian branch asanti-gender and part of a "complex threat to democracy" that "represent[s] a reactionary populist backlash to basic human rights principles," and that seeks to "demonize the very basics of trans existence".[11]
Kathleen Stock, who resigned from her position at theUniversity of Sussex in 2021 following accusations of transphobia,[32] had been criticised bystudent protesters for signing WHRC's declaration.[33][34] WHRC subsequently released a joint statement together with theWomen's Liberation Front (WoLF) in support of Stock.[35]
In June 2022 several groups opposing trans rights, including WDI USA,Alliance Defending Freedom,Family Research Council and Women's Liberation Front, organized a rally called "Our Bodies, Our Sports" in Washington D.C.The American Independent noted that some of the organizers, but not WDI, are designated ashate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Lindsay Schubiner, an expert on extremism, said: "There has been a clear increase in organizing to promote anti-LGBTQ and specifically anti-trans bigotry and I think that we can see that trend line moving up. This event in particular looks like an attempt to legitimize and elevate and spread their transphobia and especially to build political power around specific anti-trans policy goals". The article also noted that WDI had tweeted in support of abortion rights.[36]
In September 2023, WDI USA organized their annual convention in San Francisco, drawing protests from local feminists and LGBTQ rights activists.[6][37][38][39]
In its 2023 report titledCombating Anti-LGBTQ+ Pseudoscience, Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) described WDI as part of "the contemporary anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience network" and said WDI's "Declaration on Women's Sex-Based Rights" promotes "anti-trans ideology" and has "become a model for anti-trans legislation."[4][10] SPLC further said WDI engages in narrative manipulation.[10] The largest U.S. feminist organisation, theNational Organization for Women (NOW), described WDI and WoLF as "anti-trans bigots disguised as feminists" and said WDI has a focus on "sex fundamentalism and hostility towards trans people".[21][6]
TheAssociation for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) has described WHRC as atrojan horse in human rights spaces and argued that WHRC "engages in sensationalism and fear-mongering" to "undermine and water down the progressions of human rights standards that protect the rights of trans and gender non-conforming persons,"[13] and that WDI promotes "extreme anti-trans misinformation".[26] AWID and the Trans Safety Network have both described WHRC/WDI as "an extreme anti-trans group".[26][40] Equity Forward discussed WHRC in the context of theTrump administration's "anti-human rights multilateralism" and described it as anti-trans.[9] TheCanadian Anti-Hate Network described WHRC as a "TERF project".[15]
Fascism scholarSimon Strick writes that WDI’s "extremist" positions have "isolated the WDI from wider international feminism and brought them into strategic coalitions with conservative and extreme right organizations".[18][19] According toVice the group has promotedconspiracy theories and false information.[8] An article in the journalForskningspolitikk [no] (Research Policy) noted that "WDI portrays itself as a women's rights organization, but spends almost all of its time persecuting trans women," including by "trolling trans people in social media".[41]
A 2023 report byTransgender Europe described WDI as one of the mainanti-gender actors targeting trans people in Germany, and stated that WDI's tactics include fostering open hostility towards individual trans people, encouraging conspiracy thinking, building connections with the far right and promoting "shitstorms" against selected targets.[12] An article inDer Freitag argued that WDI openly promotes far-right views when it furthers the TERF cause.[17]
In Norway, WDI's leader and deputy leader Christina Eline Ellingsen and Tonje Gjevjon have appeared on the Youtube channel of the far-right anti-immigrant websiteDocument.no.[42] Cathrine Linn Kristiansen, the chair of the main Norwegianradical feminist group, theWomen's Front (Kvinnefronten), described WDI, on behalf of herself and her group, as "transphobes, racists and sexists" and said that "we strongly condemn them".[43] WDI Norway's first deputy leader Anne Kalvig said both the country's government-appointed Extremism Commission and theNorwegian Humanist Association had portrayed WDI as far-right and extremist.[44]
In 2022, WDI USA presidentKara Dansky, who has served as a WoLF board member[45] and co-chair,[46] issued a statement of support on behalf of WDI USA for the Women's Bill of Rights developed by theRepublican Study Committee group ofRepublican Party members in theUnited States House of Representatives, stating it "would enshrine into law many of the principles outlined in the globalDeclaration on Women's Sex-Based Rights, which we work to advance throughout U.S. law".[47]
By 2023, model legislation to restrict rights for transgender people had been distributed by Women's Declaration International USA to state legislatures in the United States.[2] Proposed legislation with language similar to the WDI model legislation was introduced in some state legislatures that seek to develop laws to restrict access togender-affirming care for youth under age 18.[2]
In August 2024 WDI along with several other gender-critical groups including Women's Liberation Front and European Network of Migrant Women launched an open letter condemningUN Women for "demonizing and vilifying women who know that men are not women, and never will be,"[48] in response to a UN Women statement that anti-gender and gender-critical movements areanti-rights movements that employhate propaganda and disinformation.[49][50]
WDI has voiced support for thepersecution of transgender people under the second Trump administration. WDI president Kara Dansky wrote that Trump's actions against transgender people are "rational policy,"[20] and that "I have to imagine that American TERFs have played a role in informing (May Mailman's) thinking" in draftingExecutive Order 14168 titled "Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government."[51]
Among the most important 'gender critical' groups [...] are [...] the Women's Declaration International (WDI), formerly known as the Women's Human Rights Campaign (WHRC), Fair Play for Women (FPFW), Women's Place UK, Filia, Re-sisters, Sex Matters
Concerningly, the anti-trans Women's Human Rights Campaign (WHRC) held a parallel event that was permitted to be posted to CSW65's civil society forum. This event featured numerous anti-trans "feminist" speakers and propagated WHRC's exclusionary "Declaration on Women's Sex-Based Rights."
Table 5.2: Networked Groups by Typology [...] Narrative Manipulation: [...] Women's Declaration International
Jentoft mener WHRC er en hatgruppe som jobber for å frata transpersoner autonomi og rettigheter.[Jentoft believes the WHRC is a hate group that works to deprive transgender people of autonomy and rights.]
