Latest updates

Work continues on the project, now extended to March 2022.

4 Dec 2020.  Davina Cooper on prefiguring law: the politics of experimenting with feminist law reform. Part of the Law Gender Bodies Text virtual discussion series, 4-5.30pm.  Register here.

We are delighted to announce the publication of a special issue of feminists@law on The Future of Legal Gender: Exploring the Feminist Politics of Decertification.  Open access.

Join us on 19 Jan 2021 for a Panel Discussion, jointly hosted with the Centre for Sexuality, Race and Gender Justice (SeRGJ) at the University of Kent, to mark the launch of the special issue. The Future of Legal Gender research group will discuss prominent contemporary questions on the feminist politics of sex and gender, drawing on our research, and invite comments, questions and discussion from participants.  This is an open event, please register via Eventbrite.

About the project

What should gender’s future be? Should gender fade in significance, become a matter of personal choice, define new ways of living and being, or remain a category of domination and inequality? And what can law contribute to these changes?

Currently in Britain, we all bear a legal gender, starting with the sex we are registered as having at birth.  But are there good reasons for retaining a system in which people are gendered in ways that carry formal legal status? What might change involve? And what are the implications, in terms of the challenges, risks and benefits, of radical reform?  These questions form the basis for our three-year critical law reform project, begun in May 2018, and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

 

 

 

Find out more about the project here.

Who we are

The Future of Legal Gender project is led by researchers at King’s College London, and the Universities of Kent and Loughborough, with the support of an international advisory board.

Find out more about who we are here.

 

 

 

 

Logo by Sabrin Fetih,  second and third images by Ben Kanter.  Main image from Shutterstock (unattributed).