Legality of Gender Marker Changes

Abstract

What explains the legality of gender marker changes? The correction of state identification documents poses a unique problem for transgender individuals that has measurable impacts on their sociopolitical rights. Research on LGBQ+ politics more broadly suggests that religiosity plays a significant part in support for and acceptance of LGBQ+ rights, but much of this literature overlooks the intersectional issues that impact transgender individuals. I argue that the time until legalization of gender marker changes is influenced by colonialism. I use a cox proportional hazards model to analyze a novel dataset on gender marker change legalization over the period 1990-2015. I control for religiosity and further contribute to the literature by disaggregating my Muslim religiosity variable by the two main denominations, Shia and Sunni. I find that colonialism and, more specifically, British colonialism has a negative and statistically significant impact on the time until legalization.

Data

Global Legality of Gender Marker Changes 1972 - 2019

Please contact me for access to the data and cite as: Rachel O'Neal. Global Legality of Gender Marker Changes 1972 - 2019.