As women at the BBC continue their fight for equal pay, another fight is taking place behind the scenes: Private chat groups of women BBC employees have in the last few weeks been caught up in heated discussions over the role of trans women.

When BBC News last month pledged to ensure an equal number of men and women onscreen contributors by 2019, the announcement was welcomed in several popular WhatsApp groups for women at the BBC.

The groups were set up in the wake of last year's BBC gender pay scandal, partly as a way for senior managers to help mentor young women staff. But not for the first time, the topic then turned to discussing how the new policy would include, or exclude, trans women.

“The reason we don’t get on progs and panels is discrimination due to biology and that’s the thing that needs to be addressed," wrote one senior BBC producer in the "BBC Sisterhood" WhatsApp group, which boasts more than 100 employees.



Another woman backed in the producer: “Agreed. A panel with 2 men and 2 men who identify as women is not 50/50."

But the messages struck several of the younger women in the group as anti-trans. One wrote back, "Hello, I find this quote offensive… trans women are women and should be included in these discussions?”

These kinds of divisive exchanges around trans issues have become a recurring feature in some of the BBC women's WhatsApp groups in recent weeks. Messages seen by BuzzFeed News show a deep generational divide among women fighting for equality at the BBC.

"There are TERFs [trans-exclusionary radical feminists] clashing with the millennials and just posting blatantly transphobic things in the chats," one BBC journalist who asked not to be named told BuzzFeed News. "It's not pretty and you can see younger women leaving the groups every time it comes up."

These kinds of internal BBC debates are also playing out across the UK. On Tuesday, more than 300 women announced they intended to leave the Labour party because it plans to allow self-identifying trans women on all-women candidate lists.

For the BBC, the WhatsApp exchanges about trans women show the broadcaster has a section of staff fundamentally at odds with one another on how to achieve equality.

