All-women’s college Wellesley to accept transgender women

By Elizabeth Barber

BOSTON (Reuters) – Massachusetts’ Wellesley College has revised its admissions policy to formally allow applications from transgender women, making it the latest all-women’s colleges to do so.

The elite school outside Boston has never explicitly banned transgender women, but said in a statement on its website Thursday it felt compelled to clarify its policies “in an era of a changing understanding of gender identity.”

The college will now consider “any applicant who lives as a woman and consistently identifies as a woman,” it said in the statement. The college’s board of trustees approved the new policy on Wednesday night.

The move follows similar policy changes at all-women’s colleges such as Mills College in California, Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, and Mount Holyoke and Simmons College, both in Massachusetts.

Wellesley said it will not accept applications from transgender men, but would “continue to support” any student who decides she no longer identifies as a woman during her education there.

(Writing by Richard Valdmanis. Editing by Andre Grenon)