Aibu? Don't want to include anyone but women

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I recently took up a position at a university and will be undertaking research as part of this.

I had to propose the topic to three senior colleagues and my topic is women in my field - don't want to out myself too much here.

I was able to get almost to the end of my pitch and one of my colleagues cut me off when I said 'women' and stated that surely I meant to include non-binary and transwomen too. Felt like I was under pressure to say yes. So I did.

My field is notoriously difficult for women and I wanted to focus on this. I like to think that I'm open-minded but I just don't know how to handle this, as my colleagues seem very set on being as inclusive as possible.

Am I being unreasonable by fighting to keep my research purely about women?

This

Just do it on women and say your not getting involved in the politics of other women

Is this academic research or a piece of research carried out internally and therefore should directly reflect university inclusion policies etc? I don’t know if it might also depend on funder requirements as well. Do you have a theoretical underpinning which could justify only including female participants? Or if necessary to broaden your inclusion criteria could you differentiate to explore the differences in the experiences of cis and transwomen?

That’s quite an assumption. Trans women by definition are male and therefore have all the privileges that come with that. If they worked in this field prior to deciding to be known as a trans woman, then their journey would have been a lot less challenging than a female.

Surely trans women and non binary have their own very specific challenges that are different from biological women. Perhaps if you want to focus on biological women then you can pitch that as the rational. Or, you could expand your research to look into the differences faced by these different groups of 'women' but not group them into one group. I can't see how the results of any research would be robust if you did not look at splitting these into groups, and perhaps just focusing on one 'biological women' would be too narrow to draw conclusions. It would be interesting surely to look at the differences. Plus, if you are suveying for example to see the differences women face vs men for example surely you need to survey a cross section of all genders to see how they compare. So perhaps you can still focus on biological women but include your findings on trans and non binary as comparisons which would mean you are inclusive in your research.

I understand how difficult my industry is for basically anyone who isn't a white man, having experienced issues a number of times. However, if I were to include nb and transwomen, it makes for a very different project. Very keen to focus, as with all previous research, on a range of diverse backgrounds.

I think you either open it to women (including trans men) and transwomen but assume that they probably won't apply as participants, especially if there is no political point to be made by doing so.

Or you say it's on biological sex. If they say it's not inclusive you can point out that also covers trans men and nonbinary people who were observed to be female at birth.

Just to clarify - you are referring to wanting to focus specifically on biological woman as research subjects? I think you should fight your corner on this. My PhD looks at women, maternal experience specifically.

I’ve been very clear that I mean biologically female mothers who have gestated and/or raised babies. I made it clear at the start of pitching my PhD, though, that this is what I meant and that I would not be adapting my thesis to be more broadly inclusive.

My dissertation topic was on leadership characteristics and job satisfaction of their subordinates. To the end all of the leaders I studied were women. You are not being unreasonable, because the job satisfaction of subordinates would have changed if they had male leaders and they stated as much.

I suppose the question is how much of a fight do you want to have.

Your theoretical chapters should presumably include a solid basis for your inclusion and exclusion criteria. If the literature indicates that being female is a significant factor in particular outcomes in the area of study, then you should include female people, whatever their gender.

But if you are going to write that female non binary people are included in your study, whereas male non binary people are not, you had better be prepared for at the very least an argument, and possibly a shit storm. Quite likely that male non binary people and/or transwomen may attempt to be recruited to the study, just to 'prove' how invalid your research is. Even though people have to state or agree to otherwise unverified facts about themselves all the time in consenting to research.

Are you up for it?

It is going to be difficult to navigate this depending upon your university culture.

there are two possible approaches.

my preferred approach is to target anyone who has female anatomy and thus faces the biological and societal issues surrounding menstruation, pregnancy, lactation, and menopause. This way you will pick up females regardless of how they identify.

The approach that is more likely to get past your committee in today’s environment is to survey women, trans, and non-binary. Since your study will need to ask about issues that only apply to a subset, you should include screening questions that will allow you to create two bins during your analytic phase. You may or may not get enough respondents to report much detail on the smaller bin while protecting anonymity, though it would be great if you do, but you will also be able to use that categorization to keep your results from being skewed.

Only include them if their experience is relevant to the focus of your research. Potentially transmen and female NB would be. However surely just being inclusive for being inclusive sake would skew your results and make your research worthless.

I think I'd say I wanted to focus on the female sex as I'd be looking at their early lives and education. I would actually be really angry at someone trying to affect my research in this way. As you say, if you included transmen and transwomen it would be a very different project.

Given a lot of workplace issues that apply to women come from -

• experiences growing up eg less expectation to study stem subjects
• lack of confidence in a male world
• perceived likelihood of having kids
• discrimination when they have had kids

These issues likely wouldn't apply to a trans women (if they transitioned later). They are likely to have their own forms of discrimination that are different to those that women face. On that basis I think you can make an argument to study separate categories

Doesn't really get more diverse than women with testicles 👍 how on earth are you sure it's just as difficult for transwomen to enter the field? They may have transitioned after being established in the field. And assuming that women and transwomen socialised as their birth sex would act and be treated the same

God but I am glad I got out of academia

In my previous university we had a presentation from a woman researching period poverty in England. She was challenged on why she hadn't included trans women. She simply replied the numbers were too small to be of statistical use. I thought that was a fantastic counter.

Transwomen are men. Of course if your research is on women then they should not be included. If the non binary people are women include them, if not then no because they are men. Including men in research about women completely invalidates the research because you have used an inaccurate sample.

It matters because 'trans women' are more simply known as men.

@Azureal It might be a clever counter but it's essentially a get out.

We need to be brave and honest. We cannot be forced to lie - we have a legal right to state our own beliefs and represent our views.

If we keep agreeing with the lies, nothing will change.

In this situation I would have anticipated this question and repeated that the study was on women.

Just include maternity leave and menopause and anything else that is linked to real women and you should be fine.

Could one of the parameters be women who have birthed a child as you are looking at the effect that childbirth has on someone’s physical and mental health and the resulting effects this has on the woman.

These issues likely wouldn't apply to a trans women (if they transitioned later).

Later than what - birth? Male and female babies are treated differently from the start, and the former will never experience pregancy & maternity discrimination. None of your points would affect transwomen in the same way as they affect women, regardless of when they transitioned.

You can’t do this as it would exclude females who are not mothers, adoptive mothers etc etc

If there is a wealth of research already, what are you adding with your project?