The Future of Legal Gender was a four-year project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council to explore the current British system which registers and assigns sex at birth and then treats that sex and
corresponding gender as a legal status.1 We don’t often think of sex and gender in this way. To put it in context, nationality and marriage are legal statuses that state law registers and regulates, ethnicity and sexuality
are not. Being defined as a legal status does not mean that the law always treats people differently as a result. However, specific legal statuses, such as
sex, nationality, or marital status, become relevant in different contexts, giving rise to forms of treatment that are often politically contested.

What would be the implications, in England & Wales, if the current ‘certification’ system which accords people a legal sex and gender was dismantled so that sex and gender were no longer legally controlled
statuses? Would changing how the law assigns and regulates membership in sex and gender categories help or hinder policies to undo gender-based and other forms of inequality?

It is important to stress that decertification, as addressed here, does not mean unravelling the legal protections currently in place to advance
equality. However, decertification would bring the legal structure for addressing gender and sex-based discrimination and inequality closer to that in operation for other grounds of inequality which do not rely on legally assigned or registered statuses. For instance, discrimination on grounds of race and sexual orientation are unlawful, but people are not legally
registered or assigned a sexual orientation or race. (From the report). Record #7737