In March 2020, the President of South African announced that the nation would go into full lockdown in the wake of an increase in COVID-19 infections. Academics had, in some instances, only one day to prepare for “emergency remote teaching”. Few academics had taught online before, as South Africa’s internet connectivity is not guaranteed in underprivileged areas, where 80 per cent of the population reside. The online move thus necessitated an entirely novel pedagogy for most academics, with high potential for an escalation of work-related stress and related illness, outcomes we have related in the wider sphere of workplace readjustment during COVID-19, to a state of “pandemia”. In this article, we report on an institutional case study where we surveyed n=136 academics from a university in the Western Cape, South Africa to learn more about impacts of COVID-19 on their work. The data analysis adopts Ryff’s (1995) theory of well-being. Findings indicate that the enforced lockdown due to COVID-19 and the subsequent move to online teaching has had a negative impact on academics’ sense of well-being. However, the emergence of positive, caring relationships between colleagues is reported as a significant outcome of the COVID-19 enforced move to online teaching.

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This article discusses research undertaken in the wake of Nepal's 2011 federal census, the world's first to include a gender category in addition to male and female. It presents the methodology and initial findings of a new survey of 1,178 sexual and gender minorities in Nepal conducted to determine inclusive and locally relevant methodologies for demographic information gathering. Nepal has legally recognized a third gender since 2007 and in 2011 added that category to the census. However, due to confusion and discrimination among census enumerators and a data entry system that only allowed for two genders, those who identified as third gender were not accurately measured. Beyond those limitations, the term third gender is contested, and by itself it may not fully represent the many sexual and gender minorities in Nepal, including people who are gender nonconforming. This article discusses the development of new survey data measuring the identity, behavioral, and attraction dimensions of gender and sexuality across different terms that are in use in Nepal. Initial findings show that seven distinct groups of respondents can be described, and this article discusses how to expand the concepts and considerations for inclusive data collection in Nepal.

The process is as universal as it gets: when a baby is born, a doctor, parent, or birth attendant announces the arrival of a "girl" or "boy." That split-second assignment dictates multiple aspects of our lives. It is also something that most of us never question. But some people do. Their gender evolves differently from their girl/boy birth assignment and might not fit rigid traditional notions of female or male. Gender development should have no bearing on whether someone can enjoy fundamental rights, like the ability to be recognized by their government or to access health care, education, or employment. But for transgender people, it does-to a humiliating, violent, and sometimes lethal degree. The Trans Murder Monitoring Project, an initiative that collects and analyzes reports of transgender homicides worldwide, recorded 1,731 murders of transgender people globally between 2007 and 2014. Many were of a shockingly brutal nature, sometimes involving torture and mutilation. Outright violence is not the only threat to the lives of transgender people. They are as much as 50 times more likely to acquire HIV than the population as a whole, in part because stigma and discrimination create barriers to accessing health services. Studies in the United States, Canada, and Europe have found high rates of suicide attempts among transgender people, a response to systematic marginalization and humiliation. Several countries, including Malaysia, Kuwait, and Nigeria, enforce laws that prohibit "posing" as the opposite sex-outlawing transgender people's very existence. In scores of other countries, transgender people are arrested under laws that criminalize same-sex conduct. This data only gives a glimpse of the horrific variants of violence and discrimination transgender people face. Absent legal recognition in the gender with which they identify, and associated rights and protections, every juncture of daily life when documents are requested or appearance is scrutinized becomes fraught with potential for violence and humiliation, driving many transgender people into the shadows. The demand for legal gender recognition provokes moral panic in many governments. But it is a crucial fight to wage. If transgender communities are to thrive, and if the rights to privacy, free expression, and dignity are to be upheld for all, the human rights movement needs to prioritize eliminating abusive and discriminatory procedures that arbitrarily impede the right to recognition. Governments should acknowledge that the state

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