TY - SER AU - Renz, Flora AU - Cooper, Davina TI - Reimagining gender through equality law : : what legal thoughtways do religion and disability offer? T2 - Feminist Legal Studies PY - 2022/// PB - Springer KW - The Future of Legal Gender Project KW - DISABILITY KW - DISCRIMINATION KW - GENDER KW - GENDER EQUALITY KW - INTERSEX KW - LAW REFORM KW - LGBTIQ+ KW - LGBTQIA+ KW - NON-BINARY KW - RELIGION KW - TRANSGENDER KW - WOMEN KW - INTERNATIONAL KW - UNITED KINGDOM N1 - Feminist Legal Studies, 2022, 30: 129-155 N2 - British equality law protections for sex and gender reassignment have grown fraught as activists tussle over legal and social categories of gender, gender transitioning, and sex. This article considers the future of gender-related equality protections in relation to ‘decertification’—an imagined reform that would detach sex and gender from legal personhood. One criticism of decertification is that de-formalising gender membership would undermine equality law protections. This article explores how gender-based equality law could operate in conditions of decertification, drawing on legal thoughtways developed for two other protected characteristics in equality law—religion and belief, and disability—to explore the legal responses and imaginaries that these two grounds make available. Religious equality law focuses on beliefs, communities, and practices, deemed to be stable, multivarious, and subject to deep personal commitment. Disability equality law focuses on embodied disadvantage, approached as social, relational, and fluctuating. While these two equality frameworks have considerable limitations, they offer legal thoughtways for gender oriented to both its hierarchies and its expression, including as disavowal. (Authors' abstract). Record #7738 UR - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-021-09481-3 UR - https://futureoflegalgender.kcl.ac.uk/ ER -