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The purpose of this paper is to present findings from the Trans Mental Health Study (McNeil et al., 2012) – the largest survey of the UK trans population to date and the first to explore trans mental health and well-being within a UK context. Findings around suicidal ideation and suicide attempt are presented and the impact of gender dysphoria, minority stress and medical delay, in particular, are highlighted.

This represents a narrative analysis of qualitative sections of a survey that utilised both open and closed questions. The study drew on a non-random sample (n=889), obtained via a range of UK-based support organisations and services.

The study revealed high rates of suicidal ideation (84 per cent lifetime prevalence) and attempted suicide (48 per cent lifetime prevalence) within this sample. A supportive environment for social transition and timely access to gender reassignment, for those who required it, emerged as key protective factors. Subsequently, gender dysphoria, confusion/denial about gender, fears around transitioning, gender reassignment treatment delays and refusals, and social stigma increased suicide risk within this sample.

Due to the limitations of undertaking research with this population, the research is not demographically representative.

The study found that trans people are most at risk prior to social and/or medical transition and that, in many cases, trans people who require access to hormones and surgery can be left unsupported for dangerously long periods of time. The paper highlights the devastating impact that delaying or denying gender reassignment treatment can have and urges commissioners and practitioners to prioritise timely intervention and support.

The first exploration of suicidal ideation and suicide attempt within the UK trans population revealing key findings pertaining to social and medical transition, crucial for policy makers, commissioners and practitioners working across gender identity services, mental health services and suicide prevention.

Transgender sex offenders are a small, complex and atypical group. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the issues in relationship to the assessment of gender dysphoria in transgender sex offenders and approaches to risk management.

Clinical and research experience as a Gender Specialist and Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist who has managed sex offender populations has informed this publication.

Little is known about the relationship between gender dysphoria and criminality. More research is required to develop a typology of transgender sex offenders and develop actuarial risk instruments. Protective factors in relation to gender affirmative care are also important to understand.

There is little empirical research to guide gender specialists and criminal justice professionals in the management of gender dysphoria and address risk and recidivism in transgender offender populations. The treatment of gender dysphoria could result in improved well-being and better psychosocial adjustment but cannot be relied to reduce future recidivism.

There is no evidence that treatment of gender dysphoria reduces risk and recidivism in transgender sex offenders and that research is required to identify specific gender related dynamic risk factors.

Recommendations are directly relevant to the work of prison and probation staff, community supervisors and gender identity specialists.

As far as the author is aware it is the first paper on the assessment and management of gender diverse sex offenders integrating approaches to gender dysphoria assessment and treatment and risk management. It has implication for gender identity specialists, criminal justice professionals, research and policy.

The aim of this paper will be to examine the social and economic changes that have shaped women's work identity in the USSR and Russian Federation. Based on interview research with 30 female professionals in St Petersburg, Russia, we unravel the complexities of the “woman question” in soviet discourse and explore the individual subjectivities of managing gender and managing transition.

The paper adopts a life‐history qualitative research approach. We examine how transition from a Marxist system to a free market economy has impacted employment experiences of women.

It is shown that women have traditionally progressed in managerial and professional fields in Soviet society but that this advancement is being reversed during transition stages. Emphasising the socio‐political legacies of the Soviet gender order, we highlight how dominant gender roles are being reinforced along essentialist lines. The results highlight how women's work identity is being reconstructed along stereotypically feminine lines. This feminisation of work identity however, focuses on the aesthetic qualities of being a professional woman rather than on personal managerial qualities. We argue that the construction and reconstruction of a feminine professional self is an important aspect of managing gender and transition. The results also highlight an increase in discriminatory practices in HR systems and that women face both cultural and organisational barriers to their career advancement.

The paper argues that socialist ideology did not solve the woman question, but rather produced different forms of gendered inequalities. It suggests that equal opportunities will only be achieved when organisations comply with employment legislation. The research provides important insights into the gendered management processes within transitional contexts, which have previously remained uncharted.

How do institutional settings and their embedded policy principles affect gender-typed enrolment in educational programmes? Based on gender-sensitive theories on career choice, we hypothesised that gender segregation in education is higher with a wider range of offers of vocational programmes. By analysing youth survey and panel data, we tested this assumption for Germany, Norway and Canada, three countries whose educational systems represent a different mix of academic, vocational and universalistic education principles. We found that vocational programmes are considerably more gender-segregated than are academic (e.g. university) programmes. Men, more so than women, can avoid gender-typed programmes by passing on to a university education. This in turn means that as long as their secondary school achievement does not allow for a higher education career, they have a higher likelihood of being allocated to male-typed programmes in the vocational education and training (VET) system. In addition, social background and the age at which students have to choose educational offers impact on the transition to gendered educational programmes. Overall, gender segregation in education is highest in Germany and the lowest in Canada. We interpret the differences between these countries with respect to the constellations of educational principles and policies in the respective countries.

This paper examines gender, work and equal opportunities in central and eastern Europe (CEE) countries. The worker‐mother contract in socialist systems is discussed and reveals how transition from a communist economic system to a market economy has eroded women's equality within the workplace claimed with the Communist and economic social legacy. The aim is to explore the opportunities and constraints on women's professional career advancement in post‐socialist societies.

The paper consolidates research on gender and work within CEE countries and draws on international datasets including, the Gender Development Index and Gender Empowerment Index.

The results show that women's high representation in management and professional occupations, once the hallmark of socialist employment structures, is now being threatened by the erosion of state childcare services and the increasing level of discriminatory practices in recruitment, selection and development. It is suggested that the formal state structures have acted to foster neo‐traditionalism and a traditional gender identity. Economic and political transition is argued to be a process of remasculinisation, which reaffirms gendered hierarchies and gendered power relations in public and private realms.

The paper contributes to the limited subject of equal opportunities and gender issues within an organisation context within CEE regions. The paper examines gender‐mainstreaming methodologies and considers implications for the development of equal opportunity and diversity management policies at state and organization level.

The emergence of gender-nonconforming behavior in a child presents an opportunity and, often, significant pressure for parents to question the gender beliefs they have taken for granted. The purpose of this research is to examine how parents of gender-diverse youth respond to such pressures and ultimately come to understand and support their children’s gender identity.

This research is guided by Ridgeway’s theoretical concept of gender as a primary frame for coordinating social life. Using in-depth interviews with 36 supportive parents of gender-diverse children, the author details the process by which parents developed a critical consciousness of gender and subsequently adopted trans-affirming beliefs in response to their children’s gender-nonconformity.

Findings illustrate the power of gender as a primary frame for organizing life within the family as well as the circumstances under which hegemonic gender beliefs can be disrupted and alternative beliefs can be formed. The analysis shows that the process of making space for gender diversity within the home, which is taken on almost exclusively by mothers, invokes competing maternal mandates of raising “proper” children versus modeling selfless devotion to children’s happiness and well-being. As mothers navigate these conflicting requirements to create greater gender freedom for their children, they reinforce and perpetuate gender stereotypes that cast women as natural caregivers. Ironically, the work of intensive mothering is also the mechanism through which women come to develop alternative gender beliefs that they then use to expand gender possibilities for their children.

Gender-diverse people experience unique cultural and interpersonal stigma in mainstream society and sometimes within their own communities; they face allegations of inauthenticity based on their nonconformity to either cisnormative or transnormative gender regimes. Based on 21 in-depth life history interviews, we unveil the intricate interactional process of negotiating identity and authenticity in the biographical work of gender-diverse individuals. In this study, gender-diverse people engaged in a “gender audit” with their gender-diverse interviewer. Gender audits yield verbal performances of gender with oneself and others. Ambiguity was “accounted for” or “embraced and created” in their biographical work to organize their life stories and undermine binary essentialism – a discourse that was “discursively constraining.” Gender audits took place in participants' day-to-day lives, either through self-audits, questioning from others, or both. In the final analysis, we assert that we all engage in gender auditing. Gender audits are intersubjective sites of domination, subordination, resistance, and social change. Gender diversity, then, can be viewed as a product of gender in flux.

This study aims to test bigenderism, a universalistic theory that purports to explain why trans men employees enjoy greater organizational acceptance and superior economic outcomes compared to trans women employees.

Respondents were presented with one of two case studies in which they had to choose whether or not to respect the right of a trans employee to use the restroom of their choice at work. The only difference between the two case studies was the gender of the trans employee. In one case, the employee was a trans man and in the other case, the employee was a trans woman.

The gender of the trans employee had no impact on the choices of the respondents.

The chief research implication is that heightened discrimination against trans men may better be explained by situational theories of transphobia rather than the universalistic theory that was tested in this paper. The primary research limitation was the use of American undergraduate business students as respondents.

Organizations need to be especially vigilant in protecting the restroom rights of their transgender employees, which may entail eliminating gender-segregated restrooms.

This paper is original in that it uses an experimental design to test the theory of bigenderism. It adds value by encouraging experimental research that examines situational theories of transphobia.

Though ciscentric discourses often claim that genitals alone define gender, public disciplining of gender deviance suggests a move toward a broader and less genital-focused concept of gender, even among people who explicitly object to the normalization of trans people in society. In this chapter, I explore genital focused and holistic concepts of embodied gender in public discourses about cisgender celebrities and then in trans writings about gender and fatness emerging around the time of the transgender tipping point of 2014. I argue that hyperfocus on genitals in ciscentric discourses about trans bodies not only misunderstands trans experiences of gender but also misrepresents the role of genitals in post-millennium discourses about cisgender bodies.