Women’s Bill of Rights enacted by Oklahoma governor’s executive order

The governor of Oklahoma has signed an executive order establishing a Women’s Bill of Rights as concerns about the impact of trans ideology on fairness and privacy for women continue.

Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt announced Tuesday that he had signed an executive order establishing a Women’s Bill of Rights in his state. He began his executive order by noting the significance of Title IX, legislation passed to ensure equal opportunities for women and girls in education, including in sports. Stitt warned, “Today, radical gender ideologues threaten the hard-fought progress won by women and girls in our society.”

Stitt stressed that his state had enacted a Save Women’s Sports Act requiring athletes to compete on sports teams that align with their biological sex as opposed to their stated gender identity, adding: “More remains to be done to counter the regression of women’s rights in this country.”

According to Stitt, “There are definitional, practical, and material differences between the sexes that have implications for our law in Oklahoma.”

Stitt cited his executive order as necessary to “provide clarity, certainty, and uniformity to administrative actions and rules.” Specifically, it implements a uniform definition for the word “female” as a “person whose biological reproductive system is designed to produce ova” and a universal definition for the term “male” to refer to “a person whose biological reproductive system is designed to fertilize the ova of a female.”

The order clarifies that the terms “woman” and “girl” shall only apply to biological females while “man” and “boy” shall only apply to biological males. In addition to defining “mother” and “father” as female and male parents of a child, respectively, it unveils a definition of “sex” as based on a person’s reproductive characteristics as determined at birth.

“Any public school, public school district, and any other agency, department, or subdivision of the State, that collects vital statistics for the purpose of complying with anti-discrimination laws or for the purpose of gathering accurate public health, crime, economic, or other data shall, to the fullest extent allowed by law, identify each natural person who is part of the collected data set as either male or female as defined in this Order,” the document states.

The order specifies that agencies must “provide governmental services in single-sex environments where biology, privacy, and personal dignity are implicated.” It directed prisons to “provide dedicated facilities for men and women” and schools to provide “dedicated restrooms and locker room facilities for boys and girls.”

In a statement issued following his implementation of the executive order, Stitt vowed that “as long as I’m governor, we will continue to protect women and ensure women-only spaces are reserved solely for biological women.”

Somerlyn Cothran, senior vice president of investor relations at Independent Women’s Forum and Independent Women’s Voice, praised the executive order as a signal to girls and women that “they no longer have to fear for their safety in private female-only spaces.”

Independent Women’s Forum crafted a Women’s Bill of Rights that served as the model for Stitt’s executive order as well as measures implemented in two other states: Kansas and Tennessee.

Independent Women’s Voice Advisor Riley Gaines reacted to the executive order by proclaiming, “Biological differences must be respected in the law to ensure female-only spaces have a future.”

“It is sad that such basic truths must be spelled out to ensure equal protection, but I applaud Governor Stitt for taking decisive action today,” she added. “Establishing common language by way of the Women’s Bill of Rights is a way of saying enough is enough: Oklahoman women deserve equal opportunity, privacy, and safety, and this order will help deliver it.”

Stitt’s executive order and the push for a Women’s Bill of Rights at all levels of government come as policies allowing trans-identified males to compete on women’s sports teams and use facilities designated for biological females have received renewed scrutiny due to concerns about their implications on fairness and safety for women.

USA Powerlifting, which enacted a policy requiring athletes to compete on teams that match their biological sex rather than their gender identity, has illustrated how biological differences between the sexes give men an unfair advantage over women in athletics. Factors that give males an advantage over females in sports include “increased body and muscle mass, bone density, bone structure, and connective tissue.”

A 2020 study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that trans-identified males maintain these advantages over their female counterparts even after a year of taking feminizing hormones. Meanwhile, policies that allow the housing of trans-identified males in women’s prisons have resulted in the impregnation of biologically female athletes and reports of biologically male inmates leering at their biologically female counterparts.

Policies that allow trans-identified males to use women’s restrooms and locker rooms have also come under fire for their impact on biological females.

Gaines, a former collegiate swimmer who has become an outspoken critic of the LGBT ideology underpinning efforts to allow trans-identified males to compete in women’s sports, detailed how the presence of trans-identified male swimmer Lia Thomas in the women’s locker room at a collegiate swimming championship caused “extreme discomfort” to female athletes.

Another female athlete who competed with Thomas on the University of Pennsylvania women’s swimming team shared her qualms about changing with the trans-identified male, noting that it was “definitely awkward because Lia still has male parts and is attracted to women.” An additional female swimmer mentioned how she had a “glimpse at [his] private parts.”

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