This week Women Speak Tasmania found itself discussed in Tasmania Parliament and labelled in media coverage as part of an “anti-transgender” campaign. The reason? We sent an email to Tasmanian parliamentarians inviting them to support the Women’s Pledge Australia and consider reforms to strengthen women’s sex-based protections under Tasmania’s Anti-Discrimination Act.
Women Speak Tasmania is not campaigning to remove gender identity protections from Tasmanian law. We are calling for the recognition and protection of women’s sex-based rights — rights based on biological reality, not identity.
Those rights include the ability to maintain female-only spaces, services and sports where appropriate and necessary.
For decades, women fought hard for these protections. They were not created out of prejudice, but because women as a sex class face specific vulnerabilities, including violence, privacy concerns, discrimination and physical disadvantage in sport. Female refuges, changing rooms, hospital wards and women’s sporting categories exist for legitimate reasons connected to sex.
Today, however, many women are increasingly concerned that these protections are becoming legally uncertain or impossible to maintain in practice.
Those concerns intensified following the recent Full Federal Court decision in Giggle for Girls Pty Ltd v Tickle. The court ruled that excluding a trans-identified male from a women-only app based on male appearance constituted direct discrimination on the ground of gender identity. Regardless of where people stand on that particular case, the outcome has serious implications for the future of sex-based boundaries in Australia.
Women are now asking a reasonable question: if biological sex cannot lawfully be recognised in female-only spaces, what remains of women’s sex-based protections?
That is not hatred. It is not extremism. It is a legitimate public policy question.
Yet increasingly, women who raise these concerns are dismissed with labels such as “anti-trans.” Such language shuts down debate instead of engaging with the substance of the issue. It also falsely suggests that advocating for women’s rights must come at the expense of treating transgender people with dignity and respect.
Most women involved in this movement simply want legal clarity and fairness. We believe it should be possible to protect transgender people from unjust discrimination while also preserving lawful sex-based protections for women and girls.
That is why Women Speak Tasmania launched a petition calling for “sex” to be clearly added and protected in Tasmania’s Anti-Discrimination Act. The goal is not to remove protections from others, but to ensure women do not lose the ability to organise, speak, compete and access services on the basis of biological sex.
This debate is not going away. Around Australia, and internationally, governments, courts and sporting bodies are grappling with the tension between gender identity law and sex-based rights. Women deserve the right to participate in that discussion openly and democratically, without being vilified for doing so.
Tasmanian women are not asking for special treatment. We are asking for the preservation of rights and protections previous generations fought to secure.
That should not be controversial.
Dr Elizabeth Caballero
Women Speak Tasmania
Op-ed to The Mercury on 20.05.26