Catalan Government’s documents to reflect gender and family diversity

Expanding inclusivity into the administrative realm

Earlier this week, the Government of Catalonia announced a new strategy, which seeks the incorporation of the wide range of realities that exist in contemporary society, regarding gender self-identities and family relationships. The new strategy will foster the inclusion of non-binarism and family diversity into the administrative documents and information systems of the autonomous region.

This will help people freely express themselves when dealing with the institutions, which will adapt to the recognition of self-identified gender and non-traditional families. The modification of the documentation and information systems has to be completed within the next two years.

3 pillars of the strategy

The Government reported that the Strategy has three main objectives:

• Facilitate the recognition of people with a gender identity other than the gender assigned at birth, as long as it is not legally recognized in their personal identity document;
• Include in the administrative documents, especially the forms, the reference to people who do not identify as women or men, whenever it is necessary to request the gender of the people;
• That homoparental and single-parent families can state the identity of two people of the same gender or a single parent in the procedures. In addition, it is not necessary to specify mother/father, thus taking into account the various sexual orientations and gender identities of the people who make up a family.

All administrative documents, especially paper and electronic forms, will be adapted to the recognition of self-identified gender and family diversity.

In addition, the information systems managed by the administration of the Generalitat (the regional government) and the entities and affiliated bodies linked to the performance of procedures will be reviewed, especially the applications that process data.