Introduction to Special Issue: Decertifying Legal Sex—Prefigurative Law Reform and the Future of Legal Gender

Abstract

Our analysis includes laws that relate specifically to England and Wales as well as laws which also extend to Scotland and Northern Ireland, e.g., see Ministerial and Other Maternity Allowances Act 2021, s7(1). 2 Political contestation over the terms of sex and gender-in what they mean, what they include, and how they operate as material enactments-makes their usage complicated. Our use of gender does not refer principally to identity or expression but to socially institutionalised processes that draw and maintain hierarchical distinctions. These also work with and give meaning to material forms of embodiment, conventionally understood as sex. Thus, we refer to gender in contexts where some sex-based feminists would prefer to talk about sex. Where the law refers explicitly to 'sex', we follow this terminology. However, English law is often inconsistent in its usage of these terms.

“We’re not there yet” but it’s not “pie-in-the-sky”: Legal Consciousness, Decertification and the Equality Sector in England and Wales

“…The paper is based on 38 qualitative interviews conducted by the author 13 with people in equality-based roles in local government (n = 10) and other public sector bodies (n = 5); trade unions (n = 10); non-governmental organisations (NG0s) (n = 12) and one equal pay consultant in the higher education sector (n = 1), in England and Wales. 14 The research methods used in the overall project are discussed in the project's final report (Cooper et al 2022) and the introduction to this special issue (Cooper and Renz 2023). Interviewees for the equality strand were invited because of their professional experience of working in equality governance, with diverse communities, and across intersecting inequalities.…”

“…The research period also saw a turn towards the courts by feminists seeking to protect sex-based spaces and gender-critical beliefs. 2 The interviews formed part of the 'Future of Legal Gender' project; a four-year, collaborative research project led by Davina Cooper (see Cooper et al 2022; and the introduction to this special issue, Cooper and Renz 2023). At the heart of the overall project, and the equality strand on which this paper is based, lay the questionwould changing the way the state currently registers and regulates membership of sex and gender categories help the advancement of gender equality or hinder it?…”

“I Don’t Think That’s Something I’ve Ever Thought About Really Before”: A Thematic Discursive Analysis of Lay People’s Talk about Legal Gender

“…We recognise that sex and gender are contested terms, with sex often seen as a biological 'reality' and gender a more encompassing terms including structural inequalities and individual identifications. Gender is the term typically used in this article to include biological and all other meanings unless 'sex' is the term used either in law or in participants talk, see furtherCooper et al (2022, 11) and the introduction to this Special Issue(Cooper and Renz 2023).…”

Non-binary gender markers: Mobility, migration, and media reception in Europe and beyond

“…In recent years, attention to transgender rights has given rise to a number of international legislative and policy reforms to sex and gender registration. Academic scholarship has also begun to delve into the critical questions that these developments have provoked (Aboim, 2020;Cooper et al, 2020;Quinan and Bresser, 2020;Van den Brink et al, 2015;Verloo and van der Vleuten, 2020). One significant aspect of such attempts to address gender diversity and equality has involved the re-evaluation of how binary sex or gender markers and other identity documentation practices disproportionately impact trans and non-binary people's lives (Spade, 2011).…”