Future of Legal Gender

This episode was recorded live at 'The Future of Legal Gender and the Challenge of Prefigurative Law Reform', an academic workshop held on 9 March 2022.

The workshop has been split into three parts. In part 3, we have two papers from Amanda Perry-Kessaris and Davina Cooper on legal design and prefigurative law reform.

This episode was recorded live at 'The Future of Legal Gender and the Challenge of Prefigurative Law Reform', an academic workshop held on 9 March 2022.

The workshop has been split into three parts. In part 2, we have a roundtable on 'Naming inequalities in law: The politics, hopes and challenges in using legal categories'. Speakers include Davina Cooper, Diamond Ashiagbor, Vera Kubenz, Flora Renz, and Lucy Vickers.

This episode was recorded live at 'The Future of Legal Gender and the Challenge of Prefigurative Law Reform', an academic workshop held on 9 March 2022.

The workshop has been split into three parts. In part 1, we have papers from FLaG project members, Davina Cooper (introducing decertification), Flora Renz (gender-segregated spaces), and Elizabeth Peel (people's perspectives on decertification).

Should legal sex and gender status be abolished? What might such a future law look like; and what are its risks? Currently in Britain, we each have a legal gender, starting with the sex we are registered as at birth. This legal structure has been criticised on several grounds, including that it:

a) contributes to a system which gives women and men unequal status and different roles.

b) begins the process of childhood socialisation into gender roles.

c) makes life harder for people who do not fit the sex and gender categories to which they are assigned.

This podcast episode was recorded at an online webinar, Abolishing legal sex status: A help or hindrance to equality law?, held in March 2022. 

The episode presents “decertification” as a “slow” law reform – where “slow law” indicates reforms worth attending to even though they may not be presently practicable. It also explains what the law could look like if people’s sex and gender, in Britain, was no longer registered and accorded legal status.

Speakers include Prof Davina Cooper (KCL), Dr Flora Renz (University of Kent), Prof Elizabeth Peel (Loughborough University) & Dr Jessica Smith (KCL)

In episode two, Dr Flora Renz (University of Kent) talks to Dr Jessica Smith (King's College London) about the broader implications and challenges of decertifying legal sex/gender. If we didn't have a legal sex/gender, how would single-sex schools or service providers continue to work? How can decertification, and law more generally, tackle gender and other forms of social inequality? What can a future-oriented research project offer to conversations around more traditional forms of law reform?

Read more about Flora's work on single-sex spaces, 'The Challenge of Same Sex Provision: How Many Girls Does a Girls' School Need?', an essay with feminists@law (2020) available here.

And for more on decertification, visit our website: https://futureoflegalgender.kcl.ac.uk.

This podcast was recorded in January 2021 at an event jointly hosted with the Centre for Sexuality, Race and Gender Justice (SeRGJ) at the University of Kent. The virtual event marked the launch of a special issue of feminists@law on "The Future of Legal Gender: Exploring the Feminist Politics of Decertification". 

In episode one, Dr Flora Renz (University of Kent) talks to Dr Jessica Smith (King's College London) about the legal regulation of single-sex services and spaces. How does equality law manage gender-specific sites? Is there a distinction between what law formally provides, and how it is working out on the ground? How would they operate in conditions of decertification, where sex/gender no longer form components of legal personhood?

Read more about Flora's work on single-sex spaces, 'The Challenge of Same Sex Provision: How Many Girls Does a Girls' School Need?', an essay with feminists@law (2020) available here.