Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi

ZURICH (Reuters – From January 1, people in Switzerland can legally alter their gender status by visiting the civil registry office. This will place Switzerland at the forefront European’s feminist self-identification movement.

Switzerland, together with Ireland, Portugal, Norway and Belgium, is the only country on the continent to allow legal gender changes without the need for hormone therapy or any further medical evaluations or bureaucratic steps.

Anyone 16 or older who does not fall under the legal guardianship of a legal guardian will have the option to alter their gender and legal name through self-declaration in the civil registry office. Adult protection and younger people will need guardian consent.

This is an update to the existing set of Swiss regulations in Switzerland that often requires a certification from a doctor confirming a transgender person’s identity.

Certain cantons, semi-autonomous areas in Federal Switzerland, require that a person undergo hormonal treatment or anatomical transformation in order to legally alter their gender. However, proof of unofficially used names for several years may be needed for name changes.

Switzerland, long known as socially conservative in the main, voted in September to legalise civil marriage https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/swiss-vote-allowing-same-sex-marriage-referendum-2021-09-26 and the right to adopt children for same-sex couples, one of the last countries in Western Europe to do so.

Switzerland has joined just two dozen other countries with the new rules for gender change. They aim to separate gender choices from medical procedures.

Some European countries, such as France, Denmark and Greece, have eliminated the need for medical procedures. However, rules in these other European countries require additional steps.

Spain in June approved a draft bill https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/spains-government-approves-first-draft-gender-self-identification-bill-2021-06-29 allowing anyone over the age of 14 to change gender legally without a medical diagnosis or hormone therapy. Germany in 2018 became the first European government to introduce a third gender https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-lgbt-rights-idUSKBN1L1221 option but in June 2021 shot down two bills aiming to introduce gender self-identification. A new transgender member of parliament is hoping to address https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/two-transgender-women-win-seats-german-parliament-2021-09-27 that.