Gender (de)certification and the home: A new focus for feminist legal scholarship?

This article considers three sites that draw out the contemporary role of gender categories in the home in the context of a wider project on gender decertification. Firstly, the presence of those who are employed to do care work in the home. Secondly, the introduction of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 and the way in which the parliamentary debates surrounding the introduction of the DAA highlight appropriate and inappropriate areas of legal intervention in the context of gendered ‘intimate’ relationships. Finally, the ways in which gender categories are understood in the interactions between schools/children and parents. Overall, this article argues that contemporary discourse on gender categories and trans inclusion/exclusion has primarily focused on issues within the public sphere, while the realm of the private sphere has been somewhat neglected and would benefit from a renewed focus on feminist engagements with the ways in which gender categories and norms are constructed and reinforced in this setting.