A Direct Plea to Eluned Morgan, First Minister of Wales: You know what a woman is. Just say it.
- Apr 11
- 5 min read
By Cathy Larkman April 2025
“What is a woman”? A simple question you might think.
It was asked of you Eluned, as Wales First Minister, by the leader of the Welsh Conservatives, Darren Millar, on 11th March 2025. Mr Millar clearly taking advantage of the blatant open goal provided by the opposition, taking aim and firing a fine shot into the net.
Any observer who had not been following the news over recent years, might be forgiven for thinking that it warranted a very simple answer too. Particularly as you are clearly a woman yourself and this question has been asked of many squirming politicians already. You should have therefore been very well prepared to answer this with a pithy “of course I do Darren, I am a woman myself, an adult human female”. Many women would have cheered you on, myself included and thought ‘At last!’
Not so, however. What followed was, to use the words of a Nation Cymru reporter, ‘uproar’. Collective gasps were heard, chairs were swivelled around, hard disapproving stares were quickly improvised and there was much audible tutting. Mr Millar was tartly accused of engaging in a ‘culture war’ by you, and you then notably failed to answer his question altogether.
As we all know, the ‘woman’ question has already caused serious embarrassment to an ever-growing array of politicians, including the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has stuttered and stumbled over it, including a bizarre moment when he claimed that a small percentage of women can have a penis.
He’s not the only one either. The question usually elicits a ‘rabbit in the headlights’ moment and much shambolic bumbling. Your mothers need to urgently have a word with you all, not to mention your school biology teachers.
This is the litmus test question of our times.
Of course, in the world of your party, Welsh Labour who govern in Wales, it can be tempting for you to portray this as just a silly distraction. As women know however, it is not. This is the litmus test question of our times. It instantly tells you if a politician has the integrity to speak a commonly understood material truth and, in doing so, stand up for the rights of over half the population. The female half.
Alternatively, it tells us if they are abject cowards and would rather appease, or at least not upset, the extreme activists who believe it is possible to self-identify as the opposite sex and in doing so, spout highly contestable, harmful and often nonsensical lines instead.
Women and girls in Wales should listen very carefully to the answers that Senedd politicians give. As should anyone with a mother, daughter, sister or female partner.
Unfortunately, your government in Wales would rather you didn’t pay too much attention at all. And here comes the rub.
Your party, Welsh Labour’s policy position is currently that you believe ‘trans women are women, trans men are men and non-binary identities are valid’. Just to make things very clear, you are stating that you believe males are women, females are men and there is such a thing as being neither – as long as you say so. This reality denying mantra is hard baked into your policies.
Equality law is UK wide and cannot therefore be interfered with.
It is only the fact that Equality law is UK wide and cannot therefore be interfered with, that prevents your Welsh Government from making self ID law in Wales. Your party has learnt nothing from the white-hot battle that is still raging in Scotland. Instead, your party is committed to pursuing powers to introduce self-identification in Wales and is completely in denial about the impact on women and girls, stating that:
“We believe that extending rights for one group does not mean eroding rights from another. We do not believe improving rights for trans women will damage rights for cisgender women and girls”.
Not a surprising statement, given that your colleagues have stuck their fingers into their ears and have doggedly avoided meeting with any concerned women’s campaigners, preferring instead the nodding heads of the Welsh Government funded lobby and campaign groups, who repeat back at you all everything they want to hear.
And we ourselves have yet to hear back from our two letters to you, offering to meet. Time is ticking.
The reality denying mantra was repeated with fervour and conviction by previous First Minister Mark Drakeford, including on the floor of the Senedd. This is a fact that must be awkwardly restricting your ability to honestly answer the ‘woman question’. The mantra must be disposed of and the sooner the better.
You are a pragmatic woman.
We know you are highly politically experienced, Ms Morgan. And you are a pragmatic woman. Yet your timidity on this issue is particularly disappointing. However, given the activists within your party and the dominance of ideologically driven special advisors behind the scenes, your reluctance to dip your toes into the gender critical waters may be understandable. Yet, we need you to find the courage to do so.
This is important – for single sex services in Wales in all of the areas where sex matters. For rape crisis services, domestic violence centres, hospital wards, intimate care, changing rooms and sports. We could go on. You know that these are already corrupted by ‘trans inclusive’ policies and that Welsh women cannot access single sex services or spaces. This is unacceptable, it is an all-out war on our rights as women and girls.
On a positive note, we noted that one of your first acts when you took up the reins as First Minister in Wales was to dump the so-called ‘Gender Quotas Bill’, an Act which claimed to seek 50/50 parity in political representation between men and women, and advance the position of women, while also allowing anyone putting themselves forward to self ID as a woman without challenge. Ironically, we could have ended up with all women shortlists consisting of, well, all men.
Those with keen memories will remember that WRN Wales exposed an early iteration of this Bill and gave evidence at a Senedd Reform Committee hearing regarding its eventual publication. You may also recall that Welsh Government, supported by Plaid Cymru, pushed aside all objections, including those that drew attention to the fact that it didn’t actually have the legislative powers to introduce it. As well as WRN Wales, these included the EHRC and some of your own legal advisors. So at least you had the will and the courage to stop the madness, or maybe you did not fancy the first act of the newly incumbent UK Labour Govt taking the Welsh Govt to the Supreme Court? A tad embarrassing.
So Eluned, please reconsider. The ‘what is a woman’ question is not just a question, but a useful barometer for our times. Those politicians shuffling and stuttering around in their responses, failing to reply properly at all, or professing faux outrage, know that they are lying, we know that they are lying, and they know that we know they are lying. But they still do it.
So what trust do they deserve from the public? And do you care enough about the females in Wales to speak up about it?
Take a deep breath and say those three little words Eluned. Adult human female. Women are waiting.
