The Future of Legal Gender is a four-year ESRC funded project to explore the implications and politics of reforming how sex and gender categories are used in British law.

Decertification (or the withdrawal of states from legally formalising sex-status) is a reform on the international horizon. But is it a progressive reform that would advance gender and other equality agendas? Will decertification diminish the production of gender difference? And what can we learn about gender’s relationship to law by simulating and researching an imaginary legal reform?

This concluding workshop explores key findings from our research and offers an opportunity to discuss the promises and challenges of prefigurative law reform projects.

Final Schedule

11:00 - 11.10 Welcoming remarks by Diamond Ashiagbor (Chair)

11:10 – 11:45 ‘Introduction to decertification and the dismantling of legal sex status’ by Davina Cooper

11:45 - 12:30 ‘Is there a future for gender-segregated spaces without a legal gender?’ by Flora Renz

12:30-12.35 Break

12:35 - 13:45 Roundtable on 'Naming inequalities in law: The politics, hopes and challenges in using legal categories'

• Chair: Davina Cooper

• Diamond Ashiagbor (University of Kent)

• Joanne Conaghan (University of Bristol)

• Ruth Fletcher (Queen Mary University of London)

• Vera Kubenz (University of Birmingham)

• Lucy Vickers (Oxford Brookes University)

13:45 - 1 4:30 Break

14:30 - 15:15 ‘“I don’t think that’s something I’ve ever thought about really before”: Exploring people’s perspectives on decertification’ by Elizabeth Peel

15:15 – 15:25 Break

15:25 - 16:10 ‘Designerly Ways with the Future of Legal Gender’ by Amanda Perry-Kessaris (University of Kent)

16:10 – 16:45 ‘Doing prefigurative research’ - Concluding thoughts by Davina Cooper

Contact: jessica.5.smith@kcl.ac.uk / davina.cooper@kcl.ac.uk

The Future of Legal Gender and the Challenge of Prefigurative Law Reform