The complexities of gender identity and its impact on social attitudes and policy preferences in the UK

[IwantToRetire]

Since the British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey began in 1983, researchers have paid increasing attention to how gender shapes political attitudes and behaviours. Much of this focus has centred on differences between men and women—commonly referred to as the "gender gap"—in areas such as party support, electoral turnout, and policy preferences. For example, women were historically more likely than men to support the Conservative Party in Britain, but this trend has reversed over the past two decades (Campbell and Shorrocks, 2024), and the latest BSA data show little difference in the proportion of men (19%) and women (20%) voting for the Conservatives at the last election.

However, while such analyses offer valuable insight, they rely on a binary understanding of gender as male or female. As gender roles shift alongside broader social changes—such as increased female labour force participation—understanding how individuals relate to gender identity, whether aligning with traditional or more progressive conceptions, is key to explaining variation in political and social attitudes. These identities shape interests and values, which in turn influence support for gender equality policies, left–right ideological positions, and views on issues such as same-sex relationships. This report examines how this understanding of gender may be equally—if not more—significant than traditional binaries in explaining these political and social attitudes.

Just is case anyone is interested!

https://natcen.ac.uk/publications/bsa-42-gender-identity

There is an article in the Times about this, stupidly using gender instead of sex in the titel:
https://www.thetimes.com/article/009183c6-cb52-4e99-8a11-86230cebb1ef?shareToken=5f6aed1a2dbf4c109a450d36b0e16f04

It's good to see that many of the comments are complaining about the stupid headline.

There is confusion in the questions about the gender pay gap (GPG). This concept is widely misunderstood by the public and conflated with unequal pay for the same work, which has been illegal in the UK since the 1970s.

For example, BT PLC has a mean gender pay gap for 2024 of 6.0% but Openreach (also part of the BT group of companies) has a mean GPG of -5.6%, indicating that on average woman paid more there. This is because Openreach has all the field engineers, who are paid less than the management and are mostly male. Thus the average woman in Openreach is in a management grade and the average man is a field engineer and being paid less, hence the negative GPG.

This approach - of 'going beyond traditional gender binaries' seems to conflate three different things in a way likely to obscure useful correlations:

Actual gender identity, in the child psychology/trans theory sense.

There were some TIMs among the respondents, but the survey and analysis were based on self-ID so valuable information would be lost.

Inclination to conform to current local cultural sex norms.

...which they describe as self-perception of being 'masculine' or 'feminine', but then conflate with:

How much importance people attach to their gender

...which should really be sex. For example, someone with a cross-sex 'gender identity' will think their gender is very important but their sex is not. This detail is lost.

Importantly, 'I am feminine' doesn't mean the same as 'the fact that I'm female is important'.

I'm a grumpy old woman who's always been unfeminine but considers femaleness highly salient.

When I was young, ignorant, and mostly sheltered from the consequences of my sex by my year and place of birth and middle-class status, I saw sex as something that shouldn't matter and maybe one day wouldn't. More fool me!

Report shows young well-educated females still think the same way.

And it is really irritating that it’s called the ‘gender’ pay gap, when it is explicitly supposed to measure differences between the sexes

Surely the best approach for the British Social Attitudes Survey would be to collect and analyse data both wrt sex and wrt gender? That way, they could base this discussion on some actual evidence rather than a bunch of assumptions?

I just dont see how people are allowed to set up so called research to prove a view point they have.

I suspect many of those who took part have little or no idea about the whole gender carousel, so their response in fact dont even belong in the "data".

Where is the research about how people feel about knowing their sex is a biological fact, and how they navigate a society that still continues to impose gender (the social construct) on everybody.

Thanks for the Times link.

And interesting that they give Sex Matters must of the rebuttal comments.

Although I would like to think the majority of women share their views, I doubt all the women taking part made their statement about being female did so from the same position as Sex Matters.

Article in the Telegraph:

Trans women allowed to self-identify as women in survey

Prof Sullivan added: “The ESS should be commended for distinguishing between sex and gender identity. ESS interviewers observe and note the sex of interviewees, and self-reported gender identity is recorded separately.

“However, the authors of this piece used self-identified gender where this did not align with observed sex, meaning that they have effectively combined sex and gender identity in their analysis.
“They also risk confusing the material importance of sex in women’s lives with the concept of ‘gender identity’.”

Prof Selina Todd, a modern history academic at the University of Oxford, claimed: “This report seems very confused, because the authors conflate sex and gender.

“They also misunderstand sex as ‘assigned at birth’ – it isn’t, it’s a biological fact, determined at conception.

“Gender is not an innate identity, as they claim, but a set of roles and behaviours that people are expected to conform to, depending on which sex they are.”

Article at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/16/trans-women-self-identify-survey/

Also in full at https://archive.is/6Ka8Y

Gender is not an innate identity, as they claim, but a set of roles and behaviours that people are expected to conform to, depending on which sex they are.

Gender identity =/= conformity to gender norms. Self-declared gender identity, and the inclination to display roles and behaviours expected of one's sex, are properties that are worth recording separately.

If researchers are going to take gender identity seriously, and given that there is no shortage of effeminate men and butch women who aren't trans, they have to hypothesise men who identify as women but have no particular affinity for current local cultural female sex norms. It will be difficult to tease out, because TIMs probably feel they should pretend to such an affinity (just as they adhere to expected female norms irl as part of their disguise), but it's worthwhile in principle.

I'm agnostic about gender identity, but it's still an observable property based on self-declaration, and it should be disambiguated from both birth sex and preferred gender norms. By failing to do this the researchers are, ironically, treating GI as not a real thing.

That's a very good point. I have a relation who works for a very large engine manufacturer.

In 2021/22, women earned 101% of what men did (in other words, they earned more than men). The company then was about 83% men and 17% women (with 15% women in the highest paid jobs).

However the company noticed that there weren't many girls applying to join their apprenticeship scheme so they started a positive action programme to encourage more young women to become apprentices. This worked really quite well.

Today, the company is 20% women, rather than 17%, and the number of women in the highest paid jobs has increased from 15% to 17%.

But despite this, the gender pay gap for women has turned negative.

The reason for this is that the company has taken on many more women as apprentices and so there are now a greater number of women on apprentice wages.

While this may look bad in the short term, this will mean that a lot more women will be working their way through the company after finishing their apprenticeships and so the GPG will return to what it was.

If you see any big changes to GPG then you need to have a look behind the headline figures to see what is actually going on.

Guess who used to be in charge of NatCen? Nancy Kelley.

That’s the case for all stats, though. One of the issues I regularly deal with at work is that as we get more and more data and dashboards, leaders want to believe they can interpret the numbers based on vibes. It takes some effort to understand what’s really going on, but a lot of people like cherry-picking stats to support whatever they wanted to do anyway.

Omgaaawwwwd. I'm just so sick of all this gender pontification.

We are homosapiens, mammals who either are male or female. That's it. Some humans have DSDs (which is very rare), those that have them unfortunately usually have fertility issues etc but are still categorised within the male or female sex. Some people of both sexes like to present in different ways, traditionally seen as either more masculine or feminine. Clothes and outward appearances are expressions of our feelings of self but in no way changes the physical attributes of our sex class.

Sorry, no disrespect to the op but I'm just so sick of all the hand wringing about this, particularly the shit show caused by the ineptitude of my government (the Scottish one). Humans need to get a grip of themselves, get back to reality, implement the realistic recommendations of the Supreme court and stop all this ridiculous introspection about gender fucking identity. Arghhh...

I hope you dont think I support the report.

I just think it is important to be aware of the steady stream not just from the media, but from funded research in universities, and sadly Governments.

And valuable as it is, FWR is not going to stop that tide on its own.

But we can pick apart these so called validations of trans ideology.

Hi no, I didn't think you did, I just didn't want you to think my rant was anything to do with you raising the issues via this thread, or picking them apart (or attempting to understand the thought processes). I'm just banging my head against a wall about the whole premise of it. Highlighting the batshittery is appreciated but I'm just so sick of the batshittery generally. If that makes sense.

Highlighting the batshittery is appreciated but I'm just so sick of the batshittery generally. If that makes sense.

Totally.

And you will be relieved to know I dont start a thread with every example of batshittery that comes up (I am on a number of news feeds for non FWR reasons, and it is depressing how many come up and how few GC ones do).