# The data on women's safety

- **Episode:** [199](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/199.md) (2025-05-22)
- **Type:** interview
- **Tags:** data, women-safety, statistics, risk
- **Time:** 25:08–28:47 (start 1508s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/199?t=1508](https://truthliesandwork.com/199?t=1508)

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[25:08] Leanne Elliott: Because here's the truth. If you care about women's safety, The data is clear. The most dangerous person a woman will ever meet is a man she already knows. In the UK, one woman is killed by a man every 3 days. Most of those killings happen at home, and most are committed by a partner or ex-partner. That's not opinion, that's from the Office for National Statistics and the UK Femicide Census. Trans women are not the threat. They are not responsible for this violence. But somehow they're being positioned as a reason women need protection
[25:42] Sophie Wood: Based on, and depending on which way the wind's blowing, the notion that trans people are a danger to women in women-only spaces, or that people pretend to be trans people and be a danger to women in women-only spaces. And the infuriating thing for somebody like myself is it's their, their whole kind of Reason deck. Yeah, their central kind of primary messaging is fiction. It actually doesn't exist at all. You know, there's no statistically relevant data to suggest that any person, never mind a woman, has ever been attacked by a trans person or a non-binary person in a female-only space. Or, um, by a male pretending to be a trans person in a female-only space
[26:36] Leanne Elliott: This was never just about trans people. At its core, this is about power and who gets to define identity, dignity, and belonging. Because when governments or institutions start deciding who qualifies as a woman, what they're really doing is drawing a line, a line that can be moved, a line that decides who counts and who doesn't. And once that power exists, the power to decide whose identity is valid It rarely stays contained. We've seen it before, and we're seeing it now. Rights being chipped away from the edges, cuts to mental health services, reduced access to abortion, silence around domestic violence and maternal deaths. Policies that encourage more women to have children, not by supporting them, but by making other choices harder. And while all of this is happening, the international spotlight stays fixed on trans people, just 0.3% of the population. It's a distraction, and it's working. Because while we're debating toilets and terminology, progress for other marginalized groups is quietly stalling— LGBTQ+ communities, ethnic minorities, disabled people, women. The truth is, this ruling didn't just create new rules for trans people, it created new questions for everyone else. Who gets support? Who gets to feel safe? Who gets equality? That's what's really at stake. This is not just a legal issue, it's not even just a workplace issue. It's a warning, and if we ignore it, we don't just fail trans people, we risk rolling back rights for everyone
[28:01] Al Elliott: So where do we go from here? Because if you've made it this far, you're probably wondering the same thing we are: what can we actually do? We started this episode asking what it means to be a woman. We're ending it by asking what it means to be a leader. Because culture doesn't just change in courtrooms, it changes in meeting rooms, in feedback sessions, in team chats. And leaders, especially those of us who've never had to prove our identity to be taken seriously, need to do more
[28:26] Leanne Elliott: To close out this episode, we asked Sophie to share what leaders can do right now to make safer, more inclusive workplaces. Here are 3 things she says matter most
[28:37] Al Elliott: So Sophie's first tip is about how we teach inclusion and why so many organisations are getting it just wrong. She says we need to stop othering and start connecting