Competing rights,contested vulnerabilities:Analysing policy framing in debates over Scottish and UK Govt proposals to reform the Gender RecognitionAct

In 2004 the UK Government introduced the Gender Recognition Act, providing transgender people with a process to change their legal sex. The Scottish and UK Governments have subsequently proposed and deliberated reforms to the process, including removing the requirement for medical evidence of a gender dysphoria diagnosis, and the requirement to have 'lived in the acquired gender' for two years. These proposals have resulted in an emergence of several 'gender critical feminist' organisations who have opposed the reforms on the grounds that reforms will have negative impacts on women.

This research takes this case as an example of a 'policy controversy' which has generated strongly polarised views and debate. Through analysis of 49 policy documents, the research considers how those involved in the policy process have spoken about the 'problem' of gender recognition, particularly how they have constructed their arguments for and against the reform proposals, and what assumptions, beliefs, and evidence these arguments are built from.

This thesis makes a number of important contributions, not only advancing a complex analysis of a topical policy case, but also adding new insights to bodies of work on frame analysis, political knowledge, and policy discourse. It contributes findings which are congruent with and reinforce the value of existing literature and insights, including reflecting how policy positions are constructed from multiple levels of frames and assumptions, recognising the limitations of 'evidence-based policy making', and emphasising the importance of discursive (inter)actions and exposure of 'institutional silences' in explaining policy discourse, continuity, and change. The findings also push the literature forward, generating new insights on how emphasising marginalisation and lived experience has the potential to generate political influence, and how this is complicated by competing claims to 'rights', vulnerability, and authority.