What is the Gender Recognition Act?

Since 2004 the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) has allowed trans men and trans women in the UK to change the sex recorded on their birth certificates to reflect their lived identity.

The sex recorded on your birth certificate is known as your “legal sex”.

For example: a trans man who was originally recorded as female on his birth certificate, but who transitioned to live permanently as a man, can use the GRA to change the sex on his birth certificate from female to male.

To change the sex on their birth certificate, an individual has to submit an application to a tribunal of doctors and judges. The tribunal never meet the applicant, but do have the authority to decide whether or not they can have their gender legally recognised and changed on their birth certificate.

If their application is successful, the tribunal will grant the applicant a gender recognition certificate (GRC), which can then be used to update the sex recorded on an individual’s birth certificate.

A gender recognition certificate is only needed in a few instances, such as for pensions and marriages. In Scotland and the rest of the UK you can change your name and sex on identity documents such as your driving licence and passport without one.

While the certificate does have legal effects, obtaining one is also personally important to some trans men and women as a part of their transition.

Having an important document, such as a birth certificate, not reflect who you really are and how you live your life can be distressing, remove your right to privacy about being trans, and open you up to facing discrimination and harassment when you need to use it to prove who you are.

The current law requires that applicants for a GRC:

• Are 18 or over
• Complete a statutory declaration under oath saying that they identify and are living as a man/woman, and intend to do so until death
• Have a psychiatric diagnosis of “gender dysphoria”
• Provide detailed evidence of any medical treatments they have had as part of their transition, or why they have chosen not to
• Provide two years’ worth of evidence that they have been living “in-line” with their gender – this may be in the form of updated identity documents, letters from public bodies such as the NHS, and evidence of having changed their name

The current law is UK-wide.