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Women's Platform for Action International

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It's a social construct
Gender
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Spectra and binaries
Did Freemasonry have a role in the roots of the trans movement?
—A lecture by WoPAI board member Anna Kerr to WDI, WoPAI founding member (and SPLC-designated hate group)[1]
A reminder that, the world over, trans ideology has been a pernicious threat to women's safety and freedom. No woman should have to flee her home because she knows what a man is!
—An official statement of WoPAI[2]

Women's Platform for Action International (WoPAI) is a Sweden-based far-right, anti-transgender hate group that serves as an international umbrella group for the TERF movement and that is part of the wider transnational anti-gender movement. Bringing together some of the world's main anti-trans groups—including SPLC-designated hate groups[3][4]—it describes itself as a promoter of "sex-based rights," an anti-trans pseudolegal concept, and campaigns against what it calls the "queer agenda," a "pro-gender movement" in academia and NGOs, and "non-legal and not agreed upon by the international community concepts of 'gender identity'."[5] It also calls trans people the "trans ideology."[2] WoPAI is not a legitimate feminist or human rights organization. It is a politically regressive, anti-trans extremist group that mimics the structure and rhetoric of real feminist institutions to undermine trans rights and promote a narrow, exclusionary definition of womanhood. Its messaging, tactics and affiliations place it firmly outside the global consensus of feminist and human rights movements. It has identified itself as a TERF organization on Twitter, despite TERFs often pretending it is a slur.

Founded in 2025 on the initiative of the Swedish Women's Lobby and the European Network of Migrant Women, it is deeply embedded within a far-right anti-trans ecosystem, with member organizations that are closely aligned with Trumpist, alt-right, and fascist movements. WoPAI uses populist, conspiratorial rhetoric to portray trans rights as a threat to women, fuel moral panic and resentment, and advance outdated, exclusionary biologically essentialist ideas of womanhood. WoPAI co-opts the language of human rights, distorting frameworks like CEDAW to oppose trans rights, mirroring a broader anti-gender tactic of mimicking feminist and legal discourse to undermine progressive gender norms. It claims to put "women and girls first,"[6] in language notably reminiscent of MAGA-style populism. Its website also features other anti-trans slogans such as "adult human female," "large gametes" and "ordinary meaning."[7] WoPAI is hostile to mainstream feminist organizations, scholarship, and movements. It denounces "large civil society organizations that claim to be feminist," which it accuses of driving resistance to the anti-gender movement. It portrays these groups as controlled by "corporate and special interest lobby groups," and insists that "left-labeled agendas" are being institutionalised and that "these actors have codified postmodern identity based ideologies (...). They claim that being a woman is a matter of opinion and search to eradicate women in terminology and language. (...) They say that a floating gender replaces sex."[5] WoPAI also amplifies content from Reduxx, a far-right conspiracy website that routinely depicts trans people as predators or pedophiles.

Among WoPAI's founding members are far-right groups such as Women's Declaration International (WDI), an SPLC-designated anti-LGBTQ+ hate group[3][4] that has publicly endorsed Donald Trump's anti-trans policies and claimed credit for influencing his administration's attacks on trans rights. WDI boasted about its influence on May Mailman, a far-right anti-abortion activist and Trump appointee who co-wrote Trump's executive order "Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government" with Stephen Miller.[8] WoPAI shares its secretary-general (Susannah Sjöberg), address,[note 1] and infrastructure with the Swedish Women's Lobby, which has become a central hub for exporting anti-trans ideology internationally.

WoPAI also promotes Masonic conspiracy theories with Anti-Semitic undertones. In 2025, WoPAI board member Anna Kerr gave a lecture to WDI, positing that trans people were invented by the Freemasons.[1] Prone to conspiracy theories involving "global elites," especially George Soros, WoPAI also accuses "powerful foundations such as Gates, Open Society and Ford" of orchestrating trans-inclusive feminist organizing and specifically of backing the hundreds of feminist groups that have criticized anti-trans activist Reem Alsalem,[9] and has enthusiastically supported Alsalem's demand that states "ensure that the terms 'women' and 'girls' are only used to describe biological females." WoPAI and SWL referred to trans women as "males who do not wish to be treated in law and practice as men" and opposed their inclusion in analyses of violence against women.[10] WoPAI also derides UN Women as a "men's rights organization," and has mocked and misgendered trans women and gender-diverse people seeking help from domestic violence shelters.

Not satisfied with only having one international TERF organization to fight the "queer agenda,"[5] SWL in August 2025 created yet another anti-trans group, this time with the Orwellian name "MOTERIS Protecting the Civic Space of Women and Girls." It has the same address as both SWL and WoPAI, the same leadership and members, and campaigns for "sex-based rights," trying to portray academic, NGO and feminist critics of the anti-gender and TERF movements as threats to "the Civic Space" of anti-trans activists. This reflects a broader pattern, documented by scholars, in which reactionary actors co-opt the language of rights and feminism to push anti-LGBTIQ+ agendas.

Background[edit]

🔍 Key takeaways
  • TERF ideology is a form of organized transphobia and a key faction of the transnational anti-gender movement. It is a type of pseudofeminism, falsely presenting itself as feminism while promoting far-right gender policing, anti-trans bigotry, and moral panic about gender diversity.
  • The Swedish Women's Lobby radicalized into a global anti-trans force. Once part of Sweden's gender equality infrastructure, SWL now collaborates with far-right networks and hate groups to amplify anti-trans rhetoric and attack trans rights in Sweden and internationally.

TERF ideology and far-right convergence[edit]

See the main article on this topic: TERF

In the 2010s and 2020s, trans-exclusionary radical feminism (TERFism) evolved from a fringe current within second-wave feminism into a key faction of the transnational anti-gender movement, increasingly aligned with far-right politics. As mainstream feminism embraced intersectionality and trans inclusion, TERFs presented themselves as defenders of "real women," portraying trans rights as an elite-driven project imposed by institutions like universities, progressive NGOs, and international bodies. This populist rhetoric taps into broader conspiratorial narratives common in far-right spaces, where self-proclaimed "grassroots" actors portray themselves as resisting a "corrupt," top-down establishment. Drawing from the far-right playbook, TERFs fuel moral panic, scapegoat trans people as threats to women and children, and wrap anti-trans hostility in appeals to so-called "common sense" and in a distorted imitation of feminist language. TERF campaigns target healthcare, education, legal recognition, and inclusive language, manufacturing panics over bathroom access, sports participation, and "women-only" spaces, and framing trans existence not as a human rights issue but as something to be debated. Their views stand in stark opposition to the overwhelming consensus in mainstream feminist scholarship and organizing, which rejects trans-exclusionary ideology as regressive and harmful. In the 2020s scholars have increasingly described TERF ideology both as a pathway to broader extremist worldviews and as a form of neofascism, highlighting its fixation on social purity, scapegoating of a marginalized group, authoritarian populism, rejection of pluralism, and broader alignment with white nationalist and ultra-conservative movements.[11][12]

The anti-trans radicalization of the Swedish Women's Lobby[edit]

See the main article on this topic: Swedish Women's Lobby

By the late 2010s, feminists and gender studies scholars in Sweden, a country long regarded as a global leader on gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights, had begun to raise alarm over the Swedish Women's Lobby's (SWL) shift toward trans-exclusionary ideology.[13] Just a few years earlier, in 2015, SWL had publicly positioned itself against transphobia, but this stance soon gave way to a pattern of trans-exclusionary arguments and advocacy. In 2018, thirteen Swedish gender studies scholars criticized the organization's trans-hostile stance, its promotion of misinformation about gender recognition reforms, its reliance on outdated and binary understandings of gender, and its dismissal of trans people's rights and lived realities. They called on the organization to adopt a more informed and solidaristic approach grounded in up-to-date research and trans-inclusive feminism.[14]

In 2019, SWL was publicly condemned for its transphobic views by the National Council of Swedish Children and Youth Organisations, a major civil society body representing the majority of the country's children's and youth groups.[15][16] In 2020, gender studies scholars Alm and Engebretsen observed SWL's promotion of "gender-critical" arguments, situating this within a wider pattern and noting that "a key issue in the current political and scholarly landscape is the growing convergence, and sometimes conscious alliances, between 'gender-critical' feminists (sometimes known as TERFs – Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists), religious and social conservatives, as well as right-wing politics and even neo-Nazi and fascist movements."[17] In 2020, the Swedish magazine Ottar published an exposé on what it described as an "unholy alliance" of right-wing Christians and radical feminists working to undermine trans rights. The article reported that in 2018, the Swedish Women's Lobby invited the anti-trans group Genid to an internal training session, and it identified 2020 as the point when organized anti-trans mobilization gained momentum in Sweden.[18] In a talk to Women's Declaration International (WDI) in 2020, WDI's Swedish country contact Fanny Knyphausen said WDI and the Swedish Women's Lobby were the main organizations opposing gender self-determination in Sweden, and that "the Swedish Women's Lobby had a really big loss of organizations" that left the organization as a result of its anti-trans policies.[19] Amid growing criticism of SWL for its anti-trans stance, 943 priests and other employees of the Church of Sweden in 2021 condemned "trans-exclusionary feminism [that] uses rhetoric we recognize from radical right-wing Christian groups and right-wing populists." They added: "We mourn a rights movement that punches down. You, me, we, all of us, need a broad, solidarity-based feminism that fights restrictive gender norms."[20] Sofia Magnusson and Emmeli Nybom argued that the trans-exclusionary position adopted by SWL reflects a broader ideological shift within segments of Swedish feminism, a shift they linked to the influence of international anti-trans campaigns and rhetoric promoted by right-wing actors and high-profile anti-trans activists such as J.K. Rowling.[21] This shift aligns with what Claire House has identified as a broader international trend beginning in the mid-2010s, where (radical) feminist actors increasingly participate in anti-gender and regressive politics, often with particularly harmful consequences for trans rights, a trend she illustrates, in part, by referencing Alm and Engebretsen's discussion of developments in Sweden.[22]

In the years that followed, SWL doubled down on anti-trans politics both domestically and internationally, becoming one of the most influential hubs of anti-transgender activism, while increasingly positioning itself in opposition to the left. In 2024, SWL accused "progressive parties and movements" of working against women.[23] Gender studies scholars Michal Grahn and Malin Holm observed that SWL's claims—that the Gender Recognition Act would endanger "women's rights" and allow "men" to access "women-only spaces"—closely mirror the "threat to women" narratives commonly employed in anti-trans rhetoric across other national contexts.[24] Karlberg, Korolczuk, and Sältenberg situate SWL's trajectory as part of an "insidious de-democratization," a process that erodes liberal democracy by marginalizing vulnerable groups.[25]

Since the 2020s, SWL has worked with far-right groups like Women's Declaration International (WDI), an SPLC-designated anti-LGBTQ+ hate group[3][4] that is described by established feminist organizations as "an extreme anti-trans group."[26] In 2024 Edward Summanen, a trans health expert and writer, criticized SWL for legitimizing transphobia by accepting extremist member groups like XXantippas Vrede (WDI). He warned that their tactics, such as misgendering and public shaming, amount to harassment in the name of feminism and pose a threat to democracy by silencing trans people.[27]

Anti-trans activist Dianna Kenny lists the Swedish Women's Lobby as a group opposing trans healthcare alongside Moms for Liberty, Gays Against Groomers, LGB Alliance, Genspect, Sex Matters, Transgender Trend, WDI, and other well-known anti-trans hate groups.[28]

Together with WDI and other anti-trans actors, SWL co-founded Women's Platform for Action International (WoPAI) in 2025 as an international umbrella organization for the TERF movement to oppose the "queer agenda."[5] From the onset WoPAI shared its secretary-general (Susannah Sjöberg), infrastructure and office at Karlbergsvägen 86A in Stockholm with SWL. Additionally, WoPAI's inaugural chair was former SWL president Gertrud Åström, highlighting how WoPAI is a project created by SWL.[29] SWL is now a key player in the global spread of anti-trans ideology.

The Report on violence and pathways to violence in anti-gender campaigns, published by the European Commission, discussed several of SWL's member organizations as part of an anti-gender landscape in Sweden, noting that Sweden has seen "a gradual rise in anti-gender discourses between 2015 and 2023," and that also "self-described 'gender-critical feminists'" such as WDI and Women's Rights Watch challenge feminist expertise and engage in attacks on gender studies and scholars.[30]

Opposing the "queer agenda"[edit]

🔍 Key takeaways
  • WoPAI pushes anti-trans politics under a fake feminist banner. It attacks gender diversity, inclusive feminism, and human rights groups by framing them as part of a "queer agenda" imposed by elites, while promoting pseudolegal slogans like "sex-based rights" to justify stripping trans people of recognition and protection.
  • Its messaging is built on conspiracy thinking and far-right alignment. WoPAI portrays feminist and LGBTQ+ organizations as corrupt puppets of "globalist" funders, echoes anti-UN rhetoric, and claims that gender-inclusive policies are a plot to "erase women."
  • WoPAI works closely with hate groups and authoritarian actors. Founding members include SPLC-designated hate group WDI, which supports Trump. WoPAI's network overlaps with Christian nationalists, anti-abortion extremists, and groups linked to fascist movements.
  • It mimics international institutions to gain fake legitimacy. WoPAI copies the language and formatting of UN bodies while attacking them, using this strategy to launder anti-trans propaganda into policy spaces and undermine actual human rights frameworks.
  • WoPAI targets trans-inclusive spaces with intimidation tactics. From backing Reem Alsalem's anti-trans agenda to trying to pressure UN Women into censoring inclusive events, WoPAI aims to silence feminist organizing that supports trans people.
The UK Supreme Court knows what a woman is
—Women's Platform for Action International[7]

WoPAI was launched in 2025 to promote "sex-based rights"[5]—a pseudolegal slogan TERFs weaponize against the legal recognition of trans people—and to put "women and girls first."[6] It rejects what it calls "non-legal and not agreed upon by the international community concepts of 'gender identity.'" It positions itself against what it calls the "pro-gender movement" in academia and NGOs, and opposes "queer, postmodern, or neoliberal agendas of liberal and leftist origin." It condemns what it calls "large civil society organizations that claim to be feminist," which it accuses of driving resistance to the anti-gender movement. It portrays these groups as illegitimate, claiming they lack grassroots support and are controlled by "corporate and special interest lobby groups." WoPAI further claims that "the very concept of sex is being annihilated in language and legislation, and women as a legal class of right holders are being erased." Despite claiming to be politically neutral, WoPAI's rhetoric obsessively targets the left: progressive feminist NGOs, academic institutions, and international human rights groups that support trans people. It claims that "neoliberal, relativist, left-labeled agendas" are being institutionalised and that "these actors have codified postmodern identity based ideologies and theories which harm women's rights. They claim that being a woman is a matter of opinion and search to eradicate women in terminology and language. (...) They say that a floating gender replaces sex."[5]

WoPAI's rhetoric reflects a broader conspiratorial narrative common in anti-gender discourse, which treats established feminist and human rights institutions as corrupt or co-opted enemies of "real" women. WoPAI repeats the standard talking points of the broader anti-gender movement, blaming social change on shadowy elites, presenting trans rights as a threat to women, and portraying gender diversity as a dangerous "gender ideology." A central part of this narrative is the baseless claim that inclusive language and the recognition of gender diversity "erase" women from law or society. This is often packaged in pseudolegal slogans like "sex-based rights." WoPAI's actual agenda mirrors that of the far-right: dismantling legal protections for trans people and pushing an exclusionary, biologically essentialist definition of womanhood.

Some of WoPAI's founding members, like Women's Declaration International (WDI), are enthusiastic supporters of Donald Trump and even claimed credit for influencing his first anti-trans executive order, written by Stephen Miller.[8]

WoPAI's founding members include Women's Declaration International (WDI), a far-right, anti-trans organization designated as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group by the SPLC,[3][4] and closely associated with Trumpist, alt-right, and fascist politics. WDI has publicly endorsed Donald Trump's anti-trans policies and claimed credit for influencing his administration's attacks on trans rights. WDI USA president Kara Dansky boasted about WDI's influence on May Mailman, a far-right anti-abortion activist and Trump appointee who co-wrote Trump's executive order "Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government" with Stephen Miller.[8] WDI appears to have heavily influenced WoPAI, especially in its strategy of mimicking official UN-style language and frameworks to create a false sense of legitimacy. Both groups use superficially feminist terminology to frame their anti-trans activism and present themselves as authoritative global actors despite lacking institutional recognition. One of WoPAI's two initiators, the Brussels-based TERF group European Network of Migrant Women,[31] is also listed as a supporting organization of WDI.[32] WDI's Swedish arm, XXantippas Vrede, is also a member of the Swedish Women's Lobby, underscoring the close alignment within anti-trans networks.[33]

As WoPAI was being launched, WoPAI's and SWL's secretary-general Susannah Sjöberg appeared in a video with Sharon Byrne, the head of the far-right anti-trans astroturf group Women's Liberation Front, known for its ties to anti-abortion extremist, evangelical Christian hate group Focus on the Family. According to Byrne, they talked about how "her team at the Swedish Women's Lobby had worked to kill" the gender recognition act in Sweden, and how she loved meeting "TERFs in the wild."[34][35]

WoPAI's first public act was a declaration of support[36] for Reem Alsalem, a prominent anti-trans voice and supporter of WDI.[37] The statement was framed as a counter-declaration to a 2025 open letter signed by over 230 women's rights organizations, including Planned Parenthood and Women Deliver, which condemned Alsalem's record of transphobia. This includes her appearances at anti-trans events hosted by Alliance Defending Freedom, an SPLC-designated far-right, anti-LGBT+ hate group.[38] WoPAI claimed the criticism of Alsalem for her anti-trans views was a "campaign [...] supported by powerful foundations such as Gates, Open Society and Ford."[9]

In June 2025 Tanja Olsson-Blandy, a board member of both SWL and WoPAI, supported[39][40] Alsalem's report "Sex-based violence against women and girls", that called for a ban on legal and social gender transition for children and that called on states to "ensure that the terms 'women' and 'girls' are only used to describe biological females and that such a meaning is recognised in law," while insisting trans women are "males." The report also promoted the "erasure of women" conspiracy theory.[41] Alsalem was praised by Alliance Defending Freedom for resisting "gender ideology".[42] In July 2025, WoPAI together with SWL and the European Network of Migrant Women, also issued a joint statement in support of Alsalem and this report. They referred to trans women as "males who do not wish to be treated in law and practice as men," opposed their inclusion in analyses of violence against women, accused states and UN agencies of "redefining [women] out of legal existence," called women a "sex class," and denounced "exclusion, harassment, and professional retaliation" faced by those "who advocate for [...] sex-based rights," whom they said are met with "institutional power and public vilification."[10]

WoPAI has endorsed the escalating rollback of transgender rights in the United Kingdom, applauding a court ruling that defines women exclusively as "biological" women. In a statement echoing established anti-trans rhetoric, the group declared that "the UK Supreme Court knows what a woman is" and called on other countries to adopt comparable positions.[7]

In June 2025 activists noticed that WoPAI had removed any mention of SWL's secretary-general Susannah Sjöberg also being WoPAI's secretary-general.[43] By August 2025, Susannah Sjöberg was still signing letters as secretary-general of WoPAI, calling for the exclusion of trans women from women's groups in Australia, of all places. This highlighted the deceptive tactics of SWL, which, while continuing to share the same secretary-general with WoPAI, attempted to obscure the connection by removing her name from WoPAI's website, likely in an effort to downplay their association with WoPAI's extreme anti-trans agenda to the Swedish audience, while WoPAI persisted in its global far-right, anti-trans crusade.[44]

In July 2025, WoPAI sent a letter to UN Women—an organization they had mocked as a "men's rights organization" only days earlier—complaining that an independently organized feminist forum taking place during an upcoming UN conference stated that inclusive feminists were welcome to participate, and specifically that participants in their forum were required to be inclusive of transgender people. WoPAI demanded that UN Women, "as funders or sponsors of the feminist forum space," force the forum to remove the inclusiveness requirement — an attempt at intimidating, censoring, silencing, or cancelling the event for being trans-inclusive.[45]

Member organizations[edit]

The founding member organizations are a who's who of TERFism and include Women's Declaration International (an SPLC-designated hate group, that openly supports Donald Trump), FiLiA, For Women Scotland, LAZ reloaded e.V., Feminist Legal Clinic, and other well-known TERF groups, in addition to the initiators, the Swedish Women's Lobby and the European Network of Migrant Women.[29]

Meet the members

One of WoPAI's board members is Anna Kerr,[29] an ardent promoter of Masonic conspiracy theories with Anti-Semitic undertones. Shortly after WoPAI was established, Kerr gave a lecture to WoPAI's founding member organization (and SPLC-designated hate group) WDI on how trans people were invented by the Freemasons.[1]

Another WoPAI board member is Susan Smith, a co-author of the transphobic book The Women Who Wouldn't Wheesht, a co-director of British TERF group For Women Scotland and an active collaborator with J.K. Rowling on her transphobic projects.[46]

Other people listed on the board page include their inaugural chair Gertrud Åström and their inaugural secretary-general Susannah Sjöberg,[29] and Tanja Olsson-Blandy,[47] all representing the Swedish Women's Lobby. One board member, Blessing Okoedion, is frequently mentioned on Vatican-aligned conservative websites, and even accepted an award from the Trump administration, which was personally handed out by Ivanka Trump.

Twitter activity[edit]

Elon Musk has become a hero to TERFs, so it was hardly surprising when WoPAI, in July 2025, eagerly joined his far-right platform – even as virtually everyone except neo-Nazis, trolls, and transphobes has abandoned the platform – and expressed their excitement about being on "X". They quickly drew attention as the latest anti-trans group to post transphobic "sex realist" content and complain about how TERFs are supposedly being "silenced." The account retweets well-known anti-trans hate groups such as WDI and "Let Women Speak," and exclusively follows anti-trans activists and groups, including many SPLC-designated hate groups, such as WDI, Genspect, and SEGM, and Reduxx, a far-right anti-transgender hate website run by a white supremacist that is described by SPLC as "nothing but rabid transphobia."[48]

Examples:

  • WoPAI tweets in September 2025: "A reminder that, the world over, trans ideology has been a pernicious threat to women's safety and freedom. No woman should have to flee her home because she knows what a man is!"[2]
  • WoPAI retweets a post by Initiative Lasst Frauen Sprechen! [Let Women Speak], a German far-right anti-trans group aligned with Posie Parker's "Let Women Speak" campaign, that derides UN Women as a "men's rights organization."[49]
  • WoPAI is mocking Amnesty, calling it an "anti-women org," a conspiratorial narrative pushed by TERF groups[50]
  • WoPAI retweets posts by far-right website Reduxx and anti-trans activist Reem Alsalem[51] promoting conspiracy-laden narratives that frame pushback against TERFs' harassment of trans people as "persecution" for exercising a supposed "right" to misgender. This fixation on misgendering as a protected entitlement is a recurring trope in anti-trans circles, used to recast consequences for targeted harassment as censorship or victimization.
  • WoPAI celebrates a report by anti-trans activist Reem Alsalem that calls on states to "ensure that the terms 'women' and 'girls' are only used to describe biological females" and calls for a ban on legal and social gender transition for children[52]
  • WoPAI retweets a post promoting anti-trans activist Alice Sullivan's attacks on universities for "selling out gender critics" and allegedly silencing transphobes[53]
  • WoPAI retweets a post by German anti-trans account "Was ist eine Frau?" ("What is a woman?," an anti-trans dogwhistle), which cruelly attacks and misgenders trans women and gender-diverse people seeking help from domestic violence shelters.[54]
  • WoPAI mocks the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant for the Taliban leader, ridiculing its reference to the "Taliban's policy on gender, gender identity, or expression," and remarking that they were "not aware he was a disciple of Judith Butler!" (Butler is a frequent target of hate among conspiratorial anti-trans activists).[55]
  • WoPAI extensively retweets well-known anti-trans actors such as FiLiA and J. K. Rowling
  • Despite TERFs often pretending "TERF is a slur," WoPAI retweets posts calling themselves TERFs, talking about "hundreds of TERFS [...] #XX"

Panel about a "queer war on women" at anti-trans FiLiA conference[edit]

A panel organized by WoPAI at the FiLiA conference, a notorious TERF gathering, promotes the anti-queer conspiracy theory that "queer activists" are waging a "war on women," with "the direct participation of powerful industries, UN bodies, global governments and philanthropic corporations." Speakers include Susan Smith and other prominent anti-trans activists.[56]

Who funds Women's Platform for Action International?[edit]

The Women's Platform for Action International (WoPAI) appears to have been entirely established by the Swedish Women's Lobby (SWL), sharing its address and initially staffed by key SWL officials in all major roles. According to Swedish records, WoPAI has no employees. Its own website states that "The annual membership fee is 10 EUR per year."[57] Despite having the same secretary-general as SWL and being registered at SWL's office—its address in official Swedish records even includes SWL's name and WoPAI's own "Legal Notice" lists SWL's secretary-general Susannah Sjöberg and former chair Gertrud Åström as its legal representatives—SWL has, oddly, attempted to deny having any special relationship with WoPAI beyond being a member.[note 1] However, it appears evident that WoPAI is entirely run using SWL resources, functioning as an international extension of SWL.

Analysis[edit]

🔍 Key takeaways
  • Women's Platform for Action International (WoPAI) is not a legitimate human rights or feminist organization. It is part of a broader transnational anti-gender, far-right, and anti-LGBTQ+ network. Its reputation among serious human rights defenders, scholars, and feminist activists is widely discredited, and its activities are generally understood to be reactionary and harmful to marginalized communities, especially trans people.

WoPAI is a reactionary, anti-trans organization that appropriates the language of "women's rights" to promote a biologically essentialist and politically regressive agenda. Rather than continuing the legacy of inclusive and intersectional feminism, it distorts feminist language to push positions that directly oppose core feminist principles. Through its name, messaging, and branding, WoPAI co-opts the rhetoric of women's liberation while promoting exclusionary slogans such as "sex-based rights"[5] and "women and girls first," phrases rooted not in feminism, but in anti-trans ideology, populism, and far-right narratives.

In doing so, WoPAI empties feminist rhetoric of its intersectional and liberatory content, weaponizing it to justify rigid gender binaries and target trans and queer communities. WoPAI's promotion of pseudolegal and pseudoscientific claims situate it firmly within the global anti-gender movement, a transnational alliance of far-right actors, religious fundamentalists, and illiberal populists seeking to roll back human rights under the guise of "protecting women."

From a psychological standpoint, WoPAI's rhetoric reflects a marked collapse of cognitive and emotional empathy, especially toward trans and gender-diverse individuals.

WoPAI is not viewed as a legitimate feminist organization by the broader international feminist and human rights communities. Instead, it is broadly condemned as a transphobic and far-right extremist group using pseudofeminist rhetoric as a cover for reactionary politics and anti-trans bigotry. Despite mimicking the structure and language of United Nations initiatives to feign credibility, its actions and alliances with hate groups and authoritarian political forces expose it as a backlash-driven vehicle for undermining hard-won feminist and LGBTQ+ progress.

WoPAI's campaigns do not protect women; rather, they endanger the very people feminism is meant to empower. By advancing a regressive, fringe agenda under the veneer of women's advocacy, WoPAI contributes to the erosion of democratic values, human rights norms, and the inclusive future that global feminism continues to fight for.

Another international TERF hub: "MOTERIS Protecting the Civic Space of Women and Girls"[edit]

Not satisfied with only having one international TERF organization to fight what they call the "queer agenda,"[5] the Swedish Women's Lobby only a few months later, in August 2025, created yet another anti-trans group, this time with the Orwellian name "MOTERIS Protecting the Civic Space of Women and Girls." Its stated purpose is to campaign for "sex-based rights," i.e. against transgender rights.[58][59][60] It has the same address as both SWL and WoPAI, and the same leadership and members. According to press releases published on the websites of both SWL and anti-trans groups "Feminist Legal Clinic" (associated with WDI) and "European Network of Migrant Women" (an anti-trans organization posing as a "migrants' rights" organization), the organization is led by the Swedish Women's Lobby.[58][61][62]

The organization's primary aim appears to be targeting academic, NGO and feminist critics of the anti-gender and TERF movements, portraying such criticism as an attack on "the Civic Space" of TERF activists. This reflects a broader pattern, documented by scholars, in which reactionary actors co-opt the language of rights and feminism to delegitimize opponents, thereby undermining academic freedom, human rights advocacy, and feminist resistance to anti-gender campaigns. The leadership behind MOTERIS, WoPAI, and the Swedish Women's Lobby has, under their other organizational banners, recently pushed claims that opposition to anti-gender activism is driven by George Soros, major foundations, or other so-called "globalist" forces, using this to paint critics as part of an "elite"-run agenda, and WoPAI even claims trans people were invented by the Freemasons.[1]

The organization's name, Moteris, a Lithuanian word for "woman," invokes an explicitly biological essentialist definition of womanhood and draws on Eastern European cultural signifiers that have become prominent within contemporary anti-gender and anti-LGBTQ+ mobilizations. The choice of name thus aligns the group with both the exclusionary "sex-based" framing characteristic of trans-exclusionary discourse and the symbolic repertoire of the broader transnational anti-gender movement, in which Eastern European actors have played an increasingly visible role.

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. 1.0 1.1 According to Swedish official records, the address of Women's Platform for Action International is: "SVERIGES KVINNOORGANISATIONER [Swedish Women's Lobby], Karlbergsvägen 86 a, 113 35 Stockholm." See Allabolag (Internet Archive, Archive.ph). This information is also published on WoPAI's "Who we are" page, which lists WoPAI's address as "Karlbergsvägen 86A, 3 tr, 113 35 Stockholm" (which is SWL's address). WoPAI's "Who we are" page also listed SWL's secretary-general Susannah Sjöberg as secretary-general of WoPAI and SWL's former chair Gertrud Åström as chair of WoPAI from its establishment. Archived versions of WoPAI's "Who we are" page: Internet Archive, Archive.ph. Their "Legal Notice" also lists WoPAI's address as "Karlbergsvägen 86A, 3 tr, 113 35 Stockholm" and its legal representatives and "responsible for editorial" content as Gertrud Åström, Anna Zobnina, Susannah Sjöberg. Archived versions of their "Legal Notice": Internet Archive, Archive.ph. On their own Instagram account, SWL specifically said that "we [SWL] have launched the new global movement Women's Platform for Action International" [Vi har lanserat den nya globala rörelsen Women's Platform for Action International]. On their own website, SWL said they had "initiated" WoPAI (Internet Archive, Archive.ph). Despite this well-documented relationship, and the fact that WoPAI was created by SWL to spread anti-trans ideology globally, representatives of SWL have, oddly, tried to deny the relationship.

References[edit]

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Anna Kerr (board member, Women's Platform for Action International): "Did Freemasonry have a role in the roots of the trans movement?." Published by Women's Declaration International (WDI). (Archived version of description)
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 Women's Platform for Action International (2025): "A reminder that, the world over, trans ideology has been a pernicious threat to women's safety and freedom. No woman should have to flee her home because she knows what a man is!" (Archive.ph; Screenshot)
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 "Timeline: Building a Pseudoscience Network". Combating Anti-LGBTQ+ Pseudoscience. Southern Poverty Law Center. 2023.
  4. 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 "Group dynamics and division of labor within the anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience network". Combating Anti-LGBTQ+ Pseudoscience. Southern Poverty Law Center. 2023. Table 5.2: Networked Groups by Typology [...] Narrative Manipulation: [...] Women's Declaration International
  5. 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 Why Wopai is needed (archived)
  6. 6.0 6.1 Women's Platform for Action International
  7. 7.0 7.1 7.2 The UK Supreme court knows what a woman is – now the rest of the world must follow, Women's Platform for Action International (WoPAI)
  8. 8.0 8.1 8.2 Kara Dansky: FFS Friday: May Mailman
  9. 9.0 9.1 "Launch of WoPAI". Women's Platform for Action International. Archived from the original on 2025-03-08.
  10. 10.0 10.1 "Joint Statement in Support of Reem Alsalem's Renewed Mandate". Women's Platform for Action International. 8 July 2025. Archived from the original on 8 July 2025.
  11. Bassi, Serena; LaFleur, Greta, eds. (2022). "Trans-Exclusionary Feminisms and the Global New Right". Transgender Studies Quarterly (Special issue). 9 (3).
  12. Cabral Grinspan, Mauro; Eloit, Ilana; Paternotte, David; Verloo, Mieke, eds. (2023). "Varieties of TERFness". Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies (Special issue). 10 (2).
  13. Ortiz, Joel Mauricio Isabel (9 June 2019). "Hur ska vi förstå transfobin?". Ottar.
  14. Schmitt, Irina; Bremer, Signe; Nord, Iwo; Holmqvist, Sam; Alm, Erika; Linander, Ida; Wurm, Matilda; Lundberg, Tove; Lindqvist, Anna; Wagner, Anthony; Bäck, Emma; Olovsdotter Lööv, Anna; Rydström, Jens (9 June 2018). "Vi kan bättre än så, Kvinnolobbyn!". Feministiskt Perspektiv.
  15. Lindgren, Joakim (8 April 2019). "Öppet brev till Sveriges Kvinnolobby". National Council of Swedish Children and Youth Organisations.
  16. Nilsson, Emelie (13 April 2019). "Förtydliganden om vårt öppna brev till Sveriges Kvinnolobby". National Council of Swedish Children and Youth Organisations.
  17. Alm, E.; Engebretsen, E. L. (2020). "Gender Self-identification". Lambda Nordica. 25 (1): 48–56. doi:10.34041/ln.v25.613.
  18. "Antitrans-allians". Ottar. 2020-06-11.
  19. "Who opposes gender identity politics in Mexico, Argentina, Spain, Germany, Sweden?". Women's Declaration International. 14 July 2020.
  20. 943 Church of Sweden employees (2021). "Personligt brev till dig som är trans" [A personal letter to you who are transgender]. Church of Sweden. Archived from the original on 2021-05-19.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  21. Vi oroas över S-kvinnors transexkluderande feminism
  22. House, C. C., (2023) "'I'm Real, Not You': Roles and Discourses of Trans Exclusionary Women's and Feminist Movements in Anti-gender and Right-wing Populist Politics", DiGeSt: Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies, Special Issue: Varieties of TERFness, 10(2), 14-32. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/digest.85755
  23. "Vilka står upp för kvinnors rättigheter?". Svenska Dagbladet. 18 May 2024.
  24. Grahn, M., & Holm, M. (2025). Trans inclusive no more? Allies and adversaries of gender self-identification in Sweden. European Journal of Politics and Gender, 8(1), 234–241. https://doi.org/10.1332/25151088Y2024D000000052
  25. Karlberg, E.; Korolczuk, E.; Sältenberg, H. (2025). "Insidious de-democratization: Conceptualizing anti-gender politics in Sweden". Journal of Gender Studies. 34 (1). doi:10.1080/09589236.2024.2446345.
  26. "'Gender ideology' narratives: A threat to human rights". Association for Women's Rights in Development. 2022. Archived (PDF) from the original on 3 February 2023.
  27. Summanen, Edward (2024-03-08). "Var går gränsen för trakasserier i feminismens namn?". QX. Archived from the original on 2025-06-13. Vilken feminism välkomnas av Sveriges Kvinnoorganisationer? Om feministiska föreningar som kränker och hånar transpersoner.
  28. Dianna Kenny (2024), Gender Ideology, Social Contagion, and the Making of a Transgender Generation, Appendix B
  29. 29.0 29.1 29.2 29.3 Who we are (2025-02-23)
  30. "Report on violence and pathways to violence in anti-gender campaigns". European Commission. 2024.
  31. We are launching Wopai
  32. Supporting organizations
  33. Medlemsorganisationer
  34. Sharon Byrne, WoLF, USA, Report from the Commission on the Status of Women Beijing
  35. Äntligen har WDI släppt en video om CSW69 via Sharon Byrne från Women's Liberation Front (WoLF). Hon berättar att hon mötte SKOs generalsekreterare och ska ha pratat om "trans-lagen" och hur SKO hade "worked to kill it" och hur kul det är att träffa "TERFs in the wild".
  36. CALL FOR A GLOBAL ACTION OF SUPPORT FOR UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, Ms Reem Alsalem
  37. "Rights For Me, Not For Thee: How Anti-Trans Feminists Took Their Advocacy to the United Nations". While their past attempts had failed, WDI and their supporters saw their biggest success in late 2022: getting the ear of Reem Alsalem
  38. Joint Statement Concerning the Call for Input by the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls
  39. WoPAI Intervenes at Human Rights Council Session (Archive.ph)
  40. WoPAIs (och SKO-medlemmen Östersjöfreds) Tanja Olsson-Blandy backade upp Reem Alsalems presentation, om bl a art kön enbart får ses som biologiskt och från födseln, på FNs Human Rights Council.
  41. Alsalem, Reem (2025). "Sex-based violence against women and girls" (PDF).
  42. "UN reports calls on governments to prohibit 'gender transition' for children". The Catholic Herald. 2025.
  43. Av oklar anledning har WOPAIS hemsida tagit bort vem deras generalsekreterare är (samma som SKO har)
  44. WoPAI letter by Susannah Sjöberg, August 2025 (Archive.ph)
  45. WoPAI letter, July 2025
  46. The Supreme Court ruling: What does it mean for women?
  47. Who we are (2025-07-09)
  48. Miller, Cassie (April 18, 2023). "Male Supremacy Is at the Core of the Hard Right's Agenda". Southern Poverty Law Center.
  49. Initiative Lasst Frauen Sprechen!
  50. WoPai: Not surprised to see anti-women orgs like @amnesty supporting this from @WomenDeliver, Aug 29, 2025
  51. Posts by Reduxx and Reem Alsalem
  52. WoPAI celebrates a report by anti-trans activist Reem Alsalem that calls on states to "ensure that the terms 'women' and 'girls' are only used to describe biological females"
  53. Alice Sullivan claims universities are "selling out gender critics"
  54. WoPAI retweets a post by German anti-trans account Was ist eine Frau?, which attacks and misgenders trans women and gender-diverse people seeking help from domestic violence shelters
  55. WoPAI mocks the International Criminal Court
  56. WoPAI: WoPAI Is Coming to FiLiA! (Archive.ph)
  57. Join us (Archive.ph)
  58. 58.0 58.1 SWL on MOTERIS
  59. European Network of Migrant Women: MOTERIS Protecting the Civic Space of Women and Girls
  60. Feminist Legal Clinic: MOTERIS Protecting the Civic Space of Women and Girls
  61. European Network of Migrant Women: MOTERIS Protecting the Civic Space of Women and Girls
  62. Feminist Legal Clinic: MOTERIS Protecting the Civic Space of Women and Girls

External links[edit]

  • Archived versions of WoPAI's mission statement "Why Wopai is needed", explaining its goal to fight "the queer agenda," a "pro-gender movement" in academia and NGOs, and "non-legal and not agreed upon by the international community concepts of 'gender identity'": Internet Archive, Archive.ph, Archive.is
  • Archived versions of WoPAI's "Who we are" page as of 2025-02-23: Internet Archive, Archive.ph, Archive.is; as of 2025-07-09: Internet Archive, Archive.ph
  • Archived versions of their "Legal Notice", which lists their legal representatives and "responsible for editorial" content as Gertrud Åström, Anna Zobnina, Susannah Sjöberg: Internet Archive, Archive.ph.
  • Archived versions of the Swedish Women's Lobby's website stating that SWL initiated WoPAI: Internet Archive, Archive.ph
  • Video published by WDI featuring WoPAI's/SWL's secretary-general Susannah Sjöberg with Sharon Byrne of the far-right anti-trans astroturf group Women's Liberation Front (closely associated with anti-abortion extremist, evangelical Christian hate group Focus on the Family). Byrne says they talked about how "her team at the Swedish Women's Lobby had worked to kill" the gender recognition act in Sweden, and how she loved meeting "TERFs in the wild." Archived screenshot (Sjöberg, left; Byrne, right): Bsky, Internet Archive, Archive.ph, Archive.is