CGSHE honours International Transgender Day of Visibility
March 30, 2023 | Blog
Written by Shivangi Sikri
At the Centre for Gender & Sexual Health Equity, we are committed to including trans people in our research, policy and practice. Many of our affiliated faculty, trainees and event speakers work with trans people with the goal of gender and health equity for all.
This year, for International Transgender Day of Visibility, weâd like to highlight our Gender and Sex in Methods and Measures Research Equity Toolkit (GSMM Toolkit). This project is led by CGSHE Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. A.J. Lowik in collaboration with an advisory committee of 2S/LGBTQ+ scholars.
Our toolkit aims to address the erasure in research of trans people and others who are marginalized and minoritized on the basis of their genders, sexes and sexualities. These people are often overlooked by researchers or are included in existing research studies without careful consideration of what that inclusion entails.
Too often, researchers think about gender, sex and sexuality as a sort of âadd-onâ consideration rather than incorporating these variables into all the stages of research design from question to knowledge translation.
– Dr. Sari van Anders, a member of the GSMM Advisory and a professor of Psychology, Gender Studies and Neuroscience at Queenâs University.
The GSMM tools outline recommended practices for researchersâfrom trainees to senior scholarsâfor building more equitable, reflective and inclusive research. The tools all provide illustrative example situations to guide the reader in their thinking and decision-making.
We currently have four tools available to download and a fifth tool set to launch next week!
Tool #1 Determining & Communicating Eligibility is focused on determining and communicating eligibility criteria in ways that are attentive to the lives of people of marginalized and minoritized genders, sexes and sexualities.
Tool #2: Effective Recruitment Strategies explores considerations to take into account when developing a recruitment strategy to ensure the meaningful inclusion of people who are marginalized and minoritized based on their genders, sexes and sexualities.
Tool #3: Sampling Plans & Data Analyses outlines questions and issues for researchers to carefully consider in their sampling plans and data analyses regarding their participantsâ genders, sexes, and sexualities.
Tool #4: Asking About & Measuring Participantsâ Genders & Sexes helps researchers understand whether, when and how to ask participants about their genders, sexes and sexualities. It serves as a guide to walk researchers through some common approaches to gender, sex and sexuality measurement with a focus on intentionality, precision and harm reduction.
Keep a close eye on our social media channels for the launch of Tool 5: Methodological Responsiveness Across Time. Our understanding of gender/sex/sexuality and how to measure these variables is constantly evolving and it is important to ensure that our research keeps up with the changing landscape. This tool will help researchers be responsive to change such as accounting for shifts in participant identity or reframing research foci in light of new information.