Women only tower block being built

[musicalfrog]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyjyyy2r5eo

What a good idea!

And I assume they mean real women this time- no small print!

There was a thread about this at the time it was announced which has more info.

Given its HA, given that nominations come for the local council waiting list many women will accept a flat, but with no interest or committment to what might be the "benefits" of women only housing.

I suspect many will feel its them being dumped as though they weren't equal members of society.

I think it is a shame that Women's Pioneer Housing, which had said they wouldn't expand as it would inevitably lead to losing their original purpose have caved it.

I am sure it will mean the CEO will now get a salary increase to match this expansion.

There is nothing that Housing Associations wont stoop to to increase their asset base.

It looks like they have tried to draw the rules as tightly as they thought they could, pre-SC.

I’m guessing they will update it as their policy as it stands is now clearly unlawful.

(Or it might still be unlawful as there are still various ways men can live there, which must weaken the case for an SSE).

Cue protests from men. Oh we need affordable safe housing too.

Men on estrogen will probably lead, followed by the rest.

Women's Pioneer Housing was set up by women for women.

It'd certainly be possible to set up the equivalent for low paid men as a charitable/community benefit and I think it could be a good thing if some men wanted to get together and organise it based around their needs.

The tenancy to end when a resident male child turns 12

I think this is a big stumbling block in the plan. Whilst it sounds a great idea in principle, in practice, it's designed around deliberately making mothers and children homeless - which is never a good look.

Imagine being an 11yo boy who learns that you, your mum and any siblings are going to lose their home because of you - and not because of anything that you've done, but because of the actions of a large number of adult men. Your neighbours, who only have daughters, can stay as long as they like; but you and your family are forced out of their home. Ironically, this situation could be a fertile breeding ground for incels-to-be.

Something like the female equivalent of Mount Athos could theoretically work, but in most societies, neither sex lives in a vacuum - and the fact that children exist, and obviously can be either sex, make this unworkable in reality, imo, anywhere where there is any possibility of children being born.

Also, unlike women's toilets and changing rooms - where an adult male should never be present, unless he's a cleaner with the requisite warnings - people's homes aren't that straightforward. Most tradespeople are men, so every time somebody needs a plumber, electrician, builder etc., there will very likely be men in the building - men who, if they were that way inclined, could have an easy way of getting in amongst a whole load of single women, without there even being any decent men there to stop them. It wouldn't be difficult for residents to end up having a tradie boyfriend 'working' in their house indefinitely.

I used to live in a block of HA bedsit in the 90s called Ada Lewis House. There was about 3 or 4 in London provided by the Women’s Housing Trust (as it was) but they’ve now all been demolished. Where I lived is now expensive housing.

there are other HAs providing women only housing….im a community mental health nurse and had a client on my caseload living in one provided by Viridian Housing

All this is irrelevant speculation because they're not allowing any mothers with children to apply.

This project looks to me like it's, either deliberately or inadvertently, part of the "boss girl" school of feminism that only lifts up women who choose not to have children; the school of feminism that thinks mothers threw away their chance of equality (in the workplace etc) by choosing to have kids, and by choosing to go on maternity leave, etc. I know many people IRL who think like this. Particularly people who call themselves progressive.

In my opinion it's shitty feminism that only cares about a minority of women. 80% of uk women have at least one child in their lifetime.

I do hear the pp's point who said this serves a need because councils prioritise families. But they do that for good reason, because women with small children are much more vulnerable and more likely to stay with abusive partners.

It was just my response to the suggestion that boys could be allowed up to the age of 12 - but I do agree with your comments.

If you read up on their history, the roots of their focus on single women are very clear. Founded in 1920 (by a woman called Etheldred Browning - what an excellent name!), the sudden creation of a much larger class of single women, because of the numbers of men killed in WW1, all of them needing to earn their own keep, was something that combined with the passing of the Suffrage Act 1918, and the availability of lots of large Victorian houses, as it was impossible to get Victorian levels of servants, led to her and her chums subdividing lots of these houses and renting them to the "Surplus Women" (can't recommend Virginia Nicolson's book on this time enough).

I'm not saying that it's an especially workable or realistic model for the 21st century. But just to dismiss it as "Girl Boss" feminism devalues and dismisses a huge amount of what it has stood for.

It's reliant on the assumption women won't have male partners or male kids.
I don't think the idea of it was to literally ban all men from ever entering the building.

There maybe should be something like that but it would need to be enforced to keep it very safe.

But I think this is more just a gimmick tbh.

Sounds like will rapidly become a target for men looking for vulnerable single women... it's putting a beacon on those women when it normal housing they would have to get to know the woman to find out she's single and likely a DV victim (so at higher risk of tolerating it again)

Which kind of makes the point of women only a bit redundant doesn't it ? How pointless

They are trying to do good here . If I was managing this and saw this amount of negativity on a board supposed to be supporting women I might give up on the idea entirely and that would do more harm to these women.

But they've actively said that they will include men who identify as women, whilst excluding actual women who identify as men; so they've nullified the whole principle of it themselves.

As well as the other potential hurdles that have been mentioned on this thread, they're designing it with a clear loophole meaning that it's 'for women only, along with men who want to be there with the women too'.

Similar to the toilets and changing rooms that are labelled as women's - where all the decent men who see the sign and instinctively know that they aren't for them willingly stay out, leaving only the men who want to go into female-only facilities, for whatever reasons.

Thank you for explaining the history. That is very interesting and I do enjoy reading about that era.

However, it's not relevant to the stated aims of this project based on the quotes in the article.

Single women in that era had specific difficulties with living alone, for example the need to live communally to cooperate on domestic labour because they didn't have our modern domestic appliances, as you mentioned; also there was the stigma of being single; and as you say there was a shortage of young men for tragic reasons.

Whereas for this modern project, it stated in the bbc article that the needs they are trying to address are rescuing women from domestic abuse and to correct for the gender pay gap. Both of those problems affect mothers as much as, or arguably more than, women who are not mothers.

So there is no good argument for excluding mothers. I still see it as an example of boss girl feminism.

Pioneer is already running around 1,000 homes across London according to the website. So I assume we can say their model works for them.

PS @RobinHeartella the book I recommended about the post-WWII period is called Singled Out. It really is a bit of an eye-opener.

Councils already prioritise women with children when it comes to housing.
I think this is a great idea.
It’s flats, so not really suitable for children to live in.
People generally don’t want children running about in the flat above them.
There are plenty of other places for families to live in.
The housing association recently build some flats specifically for the over 55s near me. We had people moaning but it’s turned out to be a great idea and all the flats are occupied.
I would also like more bungalows build for older people, with the caveat that they can never be turned into house which often happens when younger people buy them.

Michael Foran...

knowingius.org?utm_source=navbar&utm_medium=web

Link readable from his twitter post. Hopefully!!

https://x.com/michaelpforan/status/1935314558828024179?t=vK39nBi7ETZpMWEtPJWq_Q&s=19

JKR has weighed in on the BBC and their inaccurate reporting on this

https://archive.ph/VRcDX

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/06/18/jk-rowling-bbc-no-trust-report-trans-issues/

@RobinHeartella
... Whereas for this modern project, it stated in the bbc article that the needs they are trying to address are rescuing women from domestic abuse and to correct for the gender pay gap. Both of those problems affect mothers as much as, or arguably more than, women who are not mothers.

So there is no good argument for excluding mothers. I still see it as an example of boss girl feminism.

There is a good argument for excluding mothers with resident children, as has been explained already.

You need to understand the microcosm of the social welfare world, things are different there. In terms of homeless provision and state benefits, mothers are actually in a stronger position. In fact in terms of emergency housing, having children with you can be the difference between the council legally having to house you or not. In terms of state benefits if these are needed to pay for housing.- whilst all groups may face a shortfall between benefit provision and actual rents, this is worse for single people as well as often a lack of one-bedroomed properties to rent at all (making shortfalls impossible if they have to rent something larger).

Given these are housing association flats, it seems as if a need has been identified for flats specifically for childless women (rather than putting them in larger accommodation for families). It doesn't mean mothers are left out overall, but that their needs are already being addressed.

That aside, I'm not sure how workable this is in practice. Particularly the idea that you can just move a partner in. What if they are abusive too? Or are in fact the abusive partner the woman has previously fled from? Quite aside from any issue of letting in the type of man who likes to trample over womens' boundaries by claiming to be one.

Assuming they sort out the actual woman section, with the help of the SC, I can still get behind this idea.

Housing single women gets them off housing lists. Housing older women fleeing DA allows them to leave dangerous situations.

The shortage of accommodation for women with DC needs addressing separately. We don’t improve their case by refusing to help women who are single, and the accommodation that suits a single person won’t suit a family.

I was tutored by a brother in a monastic order. He had a large, airy room set up with a kitchen corner, a desk area and a sitting area. His bed was like a medieval box bed. It was a hugely efficient use of space.

No system is foolproof and women living there will still experience stress caused by men. But they’ll have more female neighbours, and perhaps be able to build a supportive community that strengthens them against bad actors.

There was much more privacy and far fewer men in my female only uni accommodation than in the mixed blocks.

Michael Foran on why this is completely unlawful, using his usual rapier-sharp analysis to good effect:

https://knowingius.org/p/is-the-women-only-tower-block-lawful

Is this legal post Sc ruling?

It's a lovely idea but I don't think it can work in practice. To keep it properly women-only there woukd have to be unreasonable restrictions on the tenants' rights to private and family life. It will be effectively just another normal block of housing in reality.

It would be easier to restrict the criteria so that tenancies are granted only for 5 years, on a rolling renewable basis, and are granted only to people who are single parents who are the resident parent for their children for more than 60% of the time (EOW + 1 midweek night gives the RP min 64%) and whose youngest child is under the age of 11 - so that residents know and plan that they will need to move elsewhere if they settle into a new relationship or when their youngest child is 16. The HA could have a programme of help set up to enable such transitions.The vast majority of tenants would be female under such criteria anyway, and it would make more sense and do more good than the current proposals, which will lead in 20 years time to a tower block full of empty-nester middle aged/approaching retirement people who have no uniting characteristic other than that they were single parents 20 years ago.

It's definitely unlawful for the criteria to be as they currently are. Excluding male single parents who don't have a trans identity, and single parents who are female but with a male gender identity, is illegal discrimination that has no provision to be allowed under the equality act. It would definitely be legal to have critera that restricts tenancies to actual female people only, of any gender identity. It would be fairly easy to show this as a proportionate means to a legitimate aim. It might be legal to restrict the criteria to exclude any transman whose transition is so convincing that they might cause distress to traumatised abuse survivors (most transmen look like butch lesbians and cause no such distress, but a few overdo the Testosterone and might) but it's unlikely that this exclusion would pass the "legitimate aim" test given that male partners of tenants will be allowed so it's hardly going to be a male-free environment, so more likely that transmen should be included.