JK Rowling sets up ‘women’s fund’ to support gender-critical legal cases

JK Rowling has set up a new organisation, the JK Rowling Women’s Fund, to help support ‘gender-critical’ legal cases.

The Harry Potter author, 59, who has become notorious for her “gender-critical” views on trans people, announced the creation of a private funding organisation, dubbed the “JK Rowling Women’s Fund” (JKRWF) over the weekend (24 May).

Its website explains that the fund was created to financially support individuals, organisations, or groups that are “fighting to retain women’s sex-based rights,” including in workplaces, public life, and in “protected female spaces.”

The funding will come from Rowling’s own pocket. Her net worth, as of 2021, is reported to be at least £820 million ($1.1 billion).

Individuals or organisations the fund is designed to support include individuals who are “facing tribunals because of their expressed beliefs,” are being “forced to comply with unreasonable inclusion policies regarding single-sex spaces,” have issued legal challenges to legislation which, it says, “takes away the freedoms or protections women are entitled,” or who otherwise cannot afford to “bring actions to court to defend themselves.”

The establishment of the JK Rowling Women’s Fund comes after Rowling confirmed she had donated to For Women Scotland (FWS), the ‘gender-critical’ group that helped to fund a legal case on the 2010 Equality Act’s definition of a woman and sex, resulting in a Supreme Court ruling that the definitions relate to “biological women” and “biological sex.”

The JK Rowling Women’s Fund website, which emphasises that the organisation is not a charity, meaning it cannot “accept donations,” urges individuals or groups who feel they are relevant to the fund’s goals to answer an eligibility checklist to apply for funding.

“After initial screening, applications go through a rigorous assessment by the JKRWF board,” the website continues. “Awards are at the discretion of the board, and limited to closely defined legal actions with a clear goal and timespan.”

Applicants, according to the eligibility checklist, must be based in the UK or Ireland, should be able to sufficiently explain how their lives have been affected by their beliefs on “biological sex being unchangeable” and give reasons why they require financial support.

Commenting on the fund’s creation, Rowling said she believed a private funding organisation is the “most efficient, streamlined way” for her to support legal campaigns.

In 2022, Rowling helped to create the Edinburgh-based sexual violence and rape crisis centre, Beira’s Place, which does not allow trans women to use its facilities.

The creation of the JK Rowling Women’s Fund comes at a precarious time for trans rights in the UK: The Supreme Court’s trans ruling in April has afforded justification for organisations such as the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to begin issuing anti-trans policies such as interim guidance which argues trans people should be banned from all public gendered facilities, including those associated with their birth sex.

Proposed changes to the EHRC’s code of practice for service providers in the UK has also suggested that trans people be forced to carry legal documents such as passports or Gender Recognition Certificates (GRCs) wherever they go in public.

Suggestions for the non-statutory guidance were proposed as part of a public consultation in response to the Supreme Court ruling, which the EHRC says aims to provide “vital” guidance for service providers such as shopkeepers, gym staff, or support centres.