GCRO co-hosts seminar series on re-imagining measurements of sex, gender & sexuality

In late 2022, the Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO), in collaboration with the Centre for Sexualities, AIDS, and Gender and Social Impact Insights Africa, hosted a four-part online seminar series entitled: Queering Social Survey Research: Re-imagining Measurements of Sex, Gender and Sexuality in South Africa.

The seminar series ran from 06 October to 17 November 2022, bringing together researchers from various disciplines, official statistics units, government, civil society, activists and LGBTIQ+ organisations to unpack the value and challenges of using queer lenses in social survey development. With comparative inputs from 15 renowned speakers from South Africa and other countries including Uganda, Australia, USA and UK, the seminar series reflected on survey design in a range of contexts, including:

• The dangers of ignoring sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) in survey design and instruments;
• Issues around capturing identity complexities of the entire population;
• Methodological approaches around sampling, data collection and ethics in response to SOGI; and
• The policy and advocacy intent of social surveys, and the relationship between dynamics of power and politics in relation to the inclusion of SOGI data.

Each session was attended by over 40 participants from different universities, government departments, monitoring and evaluation companies, civil society and LGBTIQ+ organisations across the world. More information about all sessions is available here.