Reforming Legal Gender Identity: A Socio-Legal Evaluation
It started in February and runs for 3 years.
... should gender remain a legal status assigned at birth; and what would be the implications of reforming this?
Our project addresses this question. It critically assesses different options for reform and their complex implications for law, policy and NGO agendas, focusing on the legal jurisdiction of England & Wales, but drawing also on developments in Scotland and overseas.
Research is organised into three consecutive work packages.
The first draws on international developments and activist arguments to outline possible options for reform (for instance, birth certificates with more than two gender options; allowing people to choose a legal gender on maturity; or modes of regulation that are more like sexual orientation and religion which are not, for the most part, formal statuses in English law while still identifying protected equality grounds).
The second work package explores the implications of different reform options. It focuses on what different options mean: for gender-differentiated provision, such as single-sex schools, domestic violence shelters, and women's groups; for diverse equality agendas including ethnic, religious and other equality grounds as well as transgender and women's equality; and for how gender is codified in law, including the key technical and administrative challenges new legislation would face. This second work package also explores public attitudes to reform, and what this can tell us about the significance of legal gender in everyday life.
The final work package draws the research together to understand key points of disagreement and tension regarding reform; and to assess the best reform option for going forward. This recommendation will be elaborated as a draft Bill in light of the data and legal principles of "good reform" to emerge from the research.
I don't know what to say about this yet, it came up on a different thread and looked important enough to have its own thread.