Reflecting on gender 

Reflecting on gender

Decentral Women’s Representatives’ Information on “Reflecting on Gender”
(“trans. inter*.non-binary. Designing teaching and learning spaces at universities reflecting on gender”, pdf download, April 2021, currently available in German only)


As a reminder / information:

Misgendering is something that can happen when a person's appearance or name is used to infer their gender. Especially for people who are not cisgender (e.g., trans or non-binary people) this can be a big burden in everyday university life, causing a lot of stress. It may inhibit people to participate orally in seminars or lectures or in general university life.

In the feedback rounds about online teaching, students described how stressful it was. Here, therefore, are three very simple simple suggestions on how misgendering can be avoided:

(1) To everyone who teaches courses: Avoid referring to people as with “Ms” and “Mr”. Do not assume that you know a person’s gender. Simply use their whole name - on Zoom it is particularly easy.

(2) To make room for sharing pronouns, teachers can suggest that people may want to share their pronouns with the seminar in addition to their name. An advantage of Zoom is that pronouns can be written next to the name (e.g., “FirstName LastName - She” or “FirstName LastName - They”). If many students and teachers do it, this practice will be normalized - which can make everyday life easier for many.

(3) Please see also the helpful guide “trans. inter*.non-binary. Designing teaching and learning spaces at universities reflecting on gender” (above) which is well worth reading, especially for those who have not yet dealt with this topic.


The HU decentral women’s representatives

This page last updated on: 16 April 2021