At Reimagine Gender, companies approach us for all sorts of reasons as they work to navigate the new world of gender — a world where half of Gen Z believes the gender binary is outdated. Here’s a small sampling of the types of inquiries we’ve received in recent months:
- “How can our team create products that better align with younger generations’ expansive understanding of gender?“
- “An employee recently told their manager that they are transgender and will be changing their name. How can we best support the employee, their team and manager through this process?”
- “We were trying to be inclusive, but we made a mistake and we’re getting backlash — what do we do now?”
- “What type of gender options should we include in our customer intake form?”
These are distinct situations and they require unique roadmaps and solutions. That said, we’ve learned over the years that the first step in effectively addressing these situations is often the same. Companies can’t meaningfully address and reimagine gender until they learn the fundamentals — until everyone on the team is speaking the same language to begin with.
In most cases, we begin by helping teams understand the differences between sex and gender, and between gender and sexual orientation. We may assume that employees already know this, but often that’s not the case. In fact, in almost every training Reimagine Gender has done, we get feedback like: “That is the first time I’ve ever heard gender explained like this — now I get it!”
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The Fundamentals: Sex and Gender, Sexual Orientation and Gender
So, what is the difference between sex and gender? Sex is biological, generally determined at birth based on a cursory look at the baby’s genitals. Gender, on the other hand, is created by people within societies and varies throughout time and place. It is composed of three dimensions — body, identity and social. Together, these help shape a person’s gender. For many people, their gender does not fit within the man-woman binary, and/or it may not align with the sex on their birth certificate. (It’s worth noting that sex is also a spectrum — it is estimated that people with intersex traits constitute 1-1.7% of the population.)
Sex and gender often get conflated with one another, but they are distinct. The same goes for gender and sexual orientation. Gender is personal — it’s how we see ourselves — while sexual orientation is interpersonal. Our sexual orientation is related to gender in several ways, particularly identity, because it is defined by our gender and the gender(s) of people we are attracted to. Because of this relationship, new gender identity terms have expanded the language we use for sexual identities as well.
That’s very much the abridged version. For more on these concepts, check out this Reimagine Gender primer.
A Universal Starting Point
For companies large and small, an overview of these fundamentals is almost always the right place to start, no matter where they ultimately want to go. How can we create the right form fields, an inclusive environment, strategic products, or engaging communications if we’re not all rooted in a common understanding of what gender is in the first place? Too many times, we’ve seen companies move forward with initiatives without a strong foundational understanding, and it almost always backfires.
The good news is that these fundamental gender concepts don’t take very long to learn and internalize. They are complex, but they’re not overly complicated if you have the right resources to guide you. And getting your team on the same page can and will make a world of difference.
Introducing Reimagine Gender’s course: Navigating the New World of Gender to Help Your Organization Thrive
Over and over again in our trainings, we saw how understanding the fundamentals helps teams develop gender literacy — which ultimately drives belonging, innovation and empathic leadership. In order to bring this experience to as many companies as possible, we decided to create a digital, self-paced course that covers the most important aspects of gender, provides a common language, and helps teams see the myriad ways we can begin to reimagine gender across the organization.
The highly interactive e-learning course launches this month, and we are so excited to share it with you. If you’re interested in finding out more, or bringing it to your company, please reach out to info@reimaginegender.org.
We get excited thinking about the potential that companies have to create environments where everyone can bring their authentic, creative self to work every day — free from the constraints of gender expectations. Getting to that point starts with a shared understanding of the basics. Only then can we truly unleash the innovation and empathy our employees, customers and communities so desperately need.