The Gender Recognition Act 2004 at 20: The state of the field
The Gender Recognition Act (GRA) has often been described as a groundbreaking and progressive legal framework for allowing people to legally change their gender. Yet, from the outset, the law has been frequently criticised by trans people and academics as it does not accurately reflect many trans people’s own understanding of their gender identity or their sexuality. It is designed to create subjects that govern their behaviour and self-expression in a way that aligns with a purely binary model of sex/gender and sexuality. Although a deviation from these norms does not incur any direct punishment, it indirectly leads to a denial of rights and legal protections. Within a decade of its inception even the then conservative government agreed that the law required reform to make it less regressive and more accessible and transparent. However, since then all reform efforts have been mired in controversy and ultimately stalled.
Reflecting on more recent case law including For Women Scotland Ltd (Appellant) v The Scottish Ministers (Respondent), which has fundamentally changed non-discrimination principles for trans people as well as the purpose of the Gender Recognition Act, this talk will reflect on the value and place of gender certification in contemporary law for England & Wales.
About the Speaker – Dr Flora Renz
Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Kent
Co-Director of the Centre for Sexuality, Race and Gender Justice, University of Kent
Dr Renz is a socio-legal scholar whose research interests lie broadly in the area of gender, disability and social and legal inequalities. Her approach to law is influenced by feminist theory and critical disability studies; it uses a mix of empirical methods and theoretical analysis. Her publications include the monograph Gender Recognition and the Law: Troubling Transgender Peoples’ Engagement with Legal Regulation (Taylor & Francis, 2024). Flora’s work on trans issues, including the regulation of single-sex spaces, access to health care and the introduction of third gender markers has been published in leading legal journals including the Journal of Law and Society and Feminist Legal Studies and has been referred to in high quality news sources including The Guardian, BBC News and Channel 4 News. Flora’s work with Dr Avi Boukli on the public health dimension of LGBT people as human trafficking victims/survivors has been cited by the UNODC.
From 2018-2022 Flora was a Co-I with Professors Davina Cooper (PI), Emily Grabham and Elizabeth Peel on the ESRC funded socio-legal project The Future of Legal Gender. Drawing on prefigurative methodologies, this project asked whether government should retain the current system of a legal gender assigned at birth and what the continuing relevance of this is in different legal and social areas such as single-sex spaces.
