The Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018 (asp 4) is an act of the Scottish Parliament which received royal assent on 9 March 2018.
The act is designed to make more public boards in Scotland more diverse in terms of gender to be more representative of Scotland, requiring that they encourage applications from women. The Act requires that when there is a vacancy, there must be more than one candidate and at least one candidate must be a woman and one candidate must not be a woman.
Originally, the act specified that the definition of a woman "includes a person who has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment (within the meaning of section 7 of the Equality Act 2010) if, and only if, the person is living as a woman and is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of becoming female."
For Women Scotland (FWS) initially won a judicial review against the act: the definition of "woman" was deemed to be outside of the devolved matters of the Scottish Parliament. This was reversed upon appeal to the Court of Session on the basis that the definition of sex was "not limited to biological or birth sex".
After the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Amendment) (Scotland) Act 2024 (asp 12) was passed, the definition of "woman" was removed in favour of using the definition from the Equality Act 2010. Statutory guidance also held that the Equality Act's definition of "man" and "woman" included people with who had undergone a recognized gender transition under the Gender Recognition Act 2004. FWS filed for a second judicial review that challenged this guidance, which was won by the Scottish Ministers. After FWS were declined an appeal, the case was taken to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. In April 2025, the court ruled in For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers that the Equality Act's definition of "man", "woman, and "sex" were in reference to "biological sex".