Ontario university applications to offer ‘another gender identity’: report

[Ontario students applying for university will get a third gender option, according to the Ontario Universities’ Application Centre in Guelph. OUAC.on.ca]

Starting in 2017, Ontario students will be among the first in Canada to have an option to enter a gender beyond male and female when applying to post-secondary institutions. It’s part of a wider movement at educational institutions to become more inclusive to a variety of gender identities, one expert says.

“Universities are taking a variety of different approaches on that issue,” Kristopher Wells, director of programs and services at the University of Alberta’s Institute for Sexual Minority Studies, tells Yahoo Canada News. “It’s certainly emerging as a best practice and conversations are happening, in a bit of a piecemeal fashion.”

Students filling out applications through the Ontario Universities’ Application Centre (OUAC) for fall 2017 admission will have the option to select “male,” “female,” or “another gender identity,” the Toronto Star reports. The application will also no longer consider gender a mandatory question, as it does now.

The OUAC wasn’t immediately available for comment.

The change comes ahead of a more permanent one that will roll out in 2018, providing a text box under another gender identity for prospective students who wish to be more specific.

And overall universities and other educational institutions are working on ways to make classifications more general, as a reflection of the increasing variety of ways their students identify themselves, Wells says. Part of that could be moving away from gender categories altogether, he says – for example, by making the only option for gender on applications a text box that applicants can fill in themselves.

“I think you’d actually be quite surprised by the diversity that would exist,” Wells says. “Just as an example you go to Facebook, where this generation often lives, and there’s 50-plus gender classifications you can choose from.”

Because the OUAC handles applications for 20 Ontario universities, the introduction of a third gender option will greatly increase the number of schools in Canada that give applicants a choice beyond male or female.

The Ontario change will affect a significant number of students with more than 373,000 people attending full-time undergraduate programs at universities in the province in 2013-14, according to the Council of Ontario Universities. By May of this year more than 580,000 applications were submitted to Ontario university programs, according to the OUAC.

But schools in other parts of the country have made their own changes to questions of gender on university applications. University of Alberta students can choose not to disclose their gender in paper applications, beginning with the coming school year. At University of Regina applicants can choose not to specify gender, or can select an option other than “male” or “female” and write in their preferred gender identity.

In the United States, several colleges, college systems and applications provide a wider range of gender options for students. The University of California system gives six different options for gender identity on its applications, for example. And the Common Application and the Universal College Application, which can be used for more than 600 schools across the U.S., expanded their gender options for the 2016-17 school year.

People expressed support for the province-wide change on Twitter.

“Great move forward for the #trans community in Ontario,” tweeted Amy Gaukel.

“Great to see successful advocacy from @UWaterloo; recognizing genderqueer, gender nonconforming, and trans students,” tweeted Danielle Pierre.

“Removing the gender would make the most sense,” tweeted Andrew G. “What bearing would gender have on a university application anyway?”

With the recent introduction of a federal bill expanding rights for trans and gender non-conforming Canadians, more and more institutions will be having these conversations and it’s important that schools be responsive, Wells says.

“The reality is that the identities of our students are changing,” Wells says. “We can make this work because it’s about enlarging the space for inclusion, and not shrinking it.”