Up until now, we've been talking about gender as if it is a binary either or system. But this is just a product of our society. In Western societies we are learning something known in other societies, that a lot of people do not fit neatly into that binary, and a lot of people don't identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. Some of you will be quite comfortable with terms such as gender identity, transgender, and cisgender for example, but some learners might not be. So it is worth taking a little time to discuss some definitions and bust some myths. First, gender binary describes a social system in which there are only two genders, a woman or a man. These genders are expected to correspond to birth sex, female or male, but we're learning that the gender binary is not representative of people's lived experiences. The term gender identity refers instead to each person's internal and individual experience of their gender. That is, it is a person's sense of being a woman, a man, both, neither, or anywhere along the gender spectrum. It's important to note that a person's gender identity may be the same as the sex they were assigned at birth or it may be different. Gender expression is how people outwardly and publicly express their gender. This could include clothing, hair, makeup, body language, and voice. A person's chosen name and pronoun are also common ways people express their gender. In English, my pronouns are she, her, and hers. Someone who identifies as a man might use he, him, and his as pronouns. Other people might use they, them, and theirs, and there are many other options in English and other languages that allow people to express their gender as they experience it. A transgender person is someone who does not follow gender stereotypes based on the sex they were assigned at birth. A person whose sex assigned at birth is female and identifies as a man, may also identify as a trans man. Similarly, a person whose sex assigned at birth is male and identifies as a woman may also identify as a trans woman. One thing that is very important to know is that trans and transgender are adjectives, not nouns, so you would never say a trans or a transgender, it is always trans man or trans woman or trans person. People might also be gender non-conforming, or non-binary, or gender queer. These are terms that are becoming more prevalent as we continue to recognize that the gender binary doesn't represent how many people feel about themselves. Gender nonconforming people might identify and express themselves as feminine men, or masculine women, or something outside of the traditional categories of boy and man and girl and woman. A person who is gender nonconforming may or may not identify as a trans person. In many cultures, gender has historically been viewed as fluid. Samoan culture includes the category of third gender. People identifying as third gender are born biologically male but embody both masculine and feminine traits. Third gender individuals are considered an important part of Samoan culture. Among indigenous communities in North America, two spirit refers to a person who identifies as having both a masculine and a feminine spirit, and is used by some indigenous people to describe their sexual, gender or spiritual identity. Cisgender people on the other hand are those whose gender identity is in line with or matches the sex they were assigned at birth. Some people say Cis for short. For example, when I was born they said, it's a girl and I still identify as a woman today. If we're going to label other gender identities, it's important that we also label the more traditional one and that is why we need to use the term cisgender as well. The problem is that in the Western context, we live in a world that has been built on assumptions that people are cisgender and that there is a gender binary. This means when it comes to analytics that we often don't have the data, we need to understand the people who we want to serve. Think about it. How is data collected? Usually when you apply for a driver's license, or for a job, or check in for a flight, or sign up for university classes, you are asked for your gender and often the only options are male and female, so people who do not identify as either a man or a woman or who changed their gender designation to align with their gender identity will feel excluded and will not be well captured by these data. These data are used for all sorts of analyses conducted by the government and researchers that inform policies and regulations as well as corporate strategies. In some places, governments and companies are coming up with better ways of capturing gender, for example in the state of Washington and several other US states, as well as provinces in Canada and jurisdictions around the world, people have an option of marking X or other. In course two on Data Collection and Analysis, we'll get into more detail on how to collect these kinds of data in respectful and insensitive ways, taking care not to exacerbate vulnerabilities. There are all sorts of guidelines, including this one from the Human Rights Campaign about how to collect transgender inclusive data in workplace and other surveys. While for some the idea that there's a wide variety of gender identities is new, surveys show that one third to two fifths of people understand that there is a spectrum of gender identities and among young people it is the majority. So policy makers and corporate leaders will be behind the times if they don't take this reality on board. Organizations are beginning to see ways that they can introduce new products and services to include non binary or trans people, for example, MasterCard launched True Name, which allows people to get a credit card in their chosen name that matches their gender identity, even if they have not gone through the often difficult and costly paperwork and legal processes to change their names officially, and retailers such as boichick in Provincetown Massachusetts offer clothing lines for non binary people, seeing that this is a real market opportunity and a community that deserves to be served by the apparel industry. Gender Analytics as a methodology recognizes that Data Collection and Analysis on gender, if it only includes the binary definition of women and men, will be inadequate to capture the realities of our societies, markets, and our communities.
