An employment tribunal had already ruled that the centre unlawfully discriminated against Roz Adams and that the management had conducted a “heresy hunt” against her. The compensation is covered by the centre’s insurance.

Ms Adams said it is her beliefs that sex is binary and that “everyone is either male or female at that level” and that people using rape crisis centres should have a choice of whether they receive help from a male or female.

She said: “It is more important to me that there is now meaningful change at ERCC, as well as at Rape Crisis Scotland and the Scottish government. My priority remains that all victim-survivors of sexual violence can make a genuinely informed choice about the service they seek and have confidence in who will support them.

“To restore that confidence, I urge these organisations to give a clear definition of ‘woman’.”

A spokesperson for ERCC said: “We recognise that during the employment tribunal with Roz Adams we did not act in the right way. We want to publicly apologise, and we understand that Roz’s actions were not motivated by transphobia, but by a genuine wish to act in the best interests of service users.

“We should have listened more to Roz’s concerns and never pursued disciplinary action and for that we are sorry.”