The Right to Gender Recognition of Transgender Persons: Law and Practice in India and Nordic Countries

Description: The right to gender recognition, fundamental to many transgender people, is recognised and constitutionally entrenched in some states and not in others. If legally recognised, this right is rarely based entirely on self-identification. Often, states put in place oppressive pre-conditions such as requirements to act gender-conformingly, to undergo hormone treatment, medical or psychological examinations, or surgery, including castration or sterilisation. This comparative talk contraststhe legislation, case law, and practices of legal gender recognition within the Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland) and in India as frontiers for trans peoples’ global struggle. 

Speakers:

Surabhi Shukla is an Indian lawyer. The core of her work relates to a feminist and queer critique of law and society. Currently, she is in the final year of a PhD in Law at the University of Oxford. Her PhD examines the role that stereotypical ideas of religion, culture, gender, and sexuality play in the outcome of highly controversial personal life decisions such as those relating to same sex relations or transgender rights, abortion, surrogacy, euthanasia etc. 

Dr. Daniela Alaattinoğlu successfully defended her PhD in law at the European University Institute in 2019. Her socio-legal PhD thesis comparatively investigates the establishment, abolition and remedy of involuntary sterilisation and castration in three Nordic countries: Sweden, Norway and Finland. She currently works as a senior researcher at the Faculty of Law at the University of Turku on a project on attrition of sexual violence in the criminal law process. 

This event is in association with: South Asia Law Discussion Group, Oriel College, Magdalen College and Oxford Queer Studies Network.