I would worry that when stuck between a rock (male leaders via self ID) and a hard place (a legal challenge from a bog standard male without an internal lady-gender) Girl Guiding will take the easy escape hatch and become a mixed sex organisation (which will no doubt cause a dwindle-to-eventual death situation).
When a boundary challenge is mounted on a single sex space or service for females, there are only two viable options, the full-on tervern defensive battle (invoking the single sex exemption in the Equality Act and possibly getting a rat nailed to your door) or capitulation.
If the org/service or business isn’t committed to the single sex model then it’s much easier to completely roll over and cede all territory to ‘inclusive/gender neutral’ than it is to defend the halfway house of single sex for females + some very special males with pink souls.
Are there enough women left in Guiding who are committed to the single sex model? Because from what I’ve seen from the outside looking in, the paid management are way more likely to roll over and declare Guiding ‘Inclusive of ALL genders’ than they are to listen to the volunteers who actually run the meetings (and care passionately about opportunities for girls).
That will cause volunteers to lose their motivation and the whole thing will eventually wither away to nothing.
Once the E.D.I. (Equity, Diversity, Inclusion) Vampire makes its way into your org, you are pretty much fucked.
The letters should be rearranged to spell out D.I.E. instead.
There is a massive opportunity for Guiding to grow in cities and bigger towns due to shifting population demographics. Girls from conservative (small c!) religious and/or immigrant backgrounds can benefit enormously from single sex extra curricular activities, as can girls in looked-after provision.
Other girls who don’t have these social restrictions benefit from mixing and integrating with the girls they would unlikely to know otherwise. Plus the benefits of girls-only provision is widely known from data on single sex schools
I use a women-only gym (an extra room at a mixed gym) and love it. It’s given me a much more diverse group of female friends.
To bring this back on topic, no doubt Stonewall would happily have my friends self-exclude from public life so a middle male in floral leggings and a crop top can take up their place in the ‘Ladies Gym’ without challenge. Unlike GG’s I think my council-owned gym would defend using the single sex exemption (only 1 of the 9 gyms under the brand banner has a designated women-only space and it’s in an area with a large number of Muslim residents. It’s clearly a proportional means to a legitimate aim, the aim being increasing activity of women from minority and marginalised communities for the aim of improved public health for all).