I think internally they had all agreed amongst themselves, based on gossip and spite, that SP was a racist transphobic bigot and so was not worthy of their kindness. The fact that in her professionalism as a nurse there was absolutely no evidence that this was the case across a 30-year career means little to them.
This has long been part of the issue, the classification of women (in the main part) as having less value for some reason annointed (in the main part) by men. In the broader paradigm it seems fairly obvious to me (inexpert) that the TRA ideology has been the most successful Trojan Horse since Troy and coming so sharp on the back of increasingly public fights for equal pay for women suggests a greater political beast hiding within the horse.
I don't think it's a conspiracy, of course, the useful idiots can't conspire themselves out of a paper bag without the help of Stonewall who proved quite good at it TBH, but within the paradigm of patriarchy where the value of women in spheres outside the home/ mother role (and even within those spheres too) is to be adjudicated by the patriarchy (which, of course, also includes women) it has conveniently operated as a massive fuckin lever to upset the work feminism has done in challenging how value is afforded to women within societal structures.
It has become, through this TRA ideology, increasingly easy to cabin, crib and confine women's sense of their own authority, to limit their sense of being free to speak as feminists, and some men too of course, and when that happens the feminist aims are immediately traduced.
Quite often women succeed in boardrooms and in institutions because they work within patriarchal systems, upholding them. It is still a requirement, I think, of moving up the ranks that women don't get uppity, that they don't challenge systems or system patriarchal modes of operation. It is all unspoken yet accepted. I think Carol Potter illustrates this perfectly and the NHS might have many more women on the board but those are, largely, patriarchal women, of whom patriarchy depends and not feminists and the result is that the labour of women in the NHS is still hugely de-valued in comparison to the labour of me and doubled when it comes to hierarchical positions which is why Upton matters so much more to the board than Peggie. And many of us know without a shadow of a doubt that if the situation had involved a doctor who was a trans man in the men's changing room that Dr/woman would not have been afforded anything like the same value as Upton.
Potter has been,, in my view, invested in upholding the patriarchy and things that holding up TRA men like Upton as veils somehow hides that fact.
It doesn't.
Her departure won't change that but I bet they replace her with a man.