WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, Independent Women, a nonprofit organization dedicated to developing and advancing policies that actually enhance opportunity and well being, applauds President Trump’s day-one executive order that provides needed clarity to sex-based words like ‘woman’, ‘man’, ‘female’ and ‘male,’ preserving the legal existence of women as distinct from men. Independent Women is the architect of model legislation to define sex-based terms in law and code in order to stop bureaucrats and elitists on the federal and state level from redefining language to fit a false narrative and erase women. Gender ideologues have sacrificed women’s rights to single-sex spaces, opportunities, and privacy on the altar of a radical view of “inclusion.” Trump’s sex-definition executive order is a nationwide victory for women and girls.
In July 2022, Independent Women’s Forum won the Heritage Foundation’s Innovation Award for the development and popularization of sex definition model legislation. Since then, Independent Women has ushered the model legislation into law in eight states, impacting the lives of over 14 million women and girls. In addition, 14 states have introduced Independent Women’s definitions legislation. Independent Women continues to lead the national effort to safeguard women’s rights.
“To protect women’s rights and women’s spaces, words like ‘women’ and ‘men’ must be defined in law,” said Jordanne Kemper, campaign director for Independent Women. “Americans overwhelmingly recognize the utter unfairness of allowing men into women’s sports and want female athletics protected. But the damage from this absurd ideology goes far beyond athletics. Female inmates in prison, women in domestic violence shelters, women and girls using locker rooms, they have the right to privacy and safety. Many states have already taken action to ensure their laws are clear in the wake of the Biden administration‘s efforts to erode women’s rights and conflate ‘sex’ and ‘gender-identity’. With this executive order, President Trump is helping guarantee Americans that words do have meaning and women’s rights and opportunities will be preserved.”
For years, academics and much of the progressive left have sought to undermine our shared understanding of common language so that men who claim to identify as women can access what are meant to be female-only arenas. Supreme Court Justice Katanji Jackson Brown famously refused to define the word woman in her nomination hearing, a disturbing admission given that the word woman is used thousands of times in our laws and regulations. President Trump is now addressing this failure, taking on radical gender ideology, and restoring the common sense definitions of women and men, providing much needed clarity to our legal code.
Importantly, this executive order uses Independent Women’s definitions of ‘sex,’ ‘female,’ and ‘male’ as based on reproductive potential, rather than chromosomes, to ensure clarity and protection for all individuals.
Senior legal advisor for Independent Women, Beth Parlato said, “Over the past four years, gender ideology has infiltrated our schools, culture, policies and laws and has distorted our language with terms such as ‘pregnant person’ and forced use of opposite-sex pronouns. The lie that sex is fluid erases and endangers women. President Trump’s action today is a resounding victory for truth; that sex is binary, and women are biologically distinct from men. His repudiation of gender identity indoctrination brings back sanity and common sense.”
Carrie Lukas, president of Independent Women’s Forum, concluded: “I’m incredibly proud of the groundwork that the team at Independent Women laid for today’s victory. As we have long argued, the United States is a nation of laws, not men. To have a system of laws, words must have meaning. Today, President Trump stopped the Left’s attempts to erase the concept of women as a separate sex. On behalf of women and girls everywhere, thank you President Trump.”