Forming Woman is This (WiT)

The WiT collective was formed in 2021 by women from a number of online gender critical or radical feminist groups. 

Writing the Survey 

The survey was devised and written by members of the WiT collective.

It was open for responses for three months, from Sep 2021 to December 2021. It was made available to potential respondents through the online survey tool, Survey Monkey. Although the survey was open to women in any country, as the WiT collective had limited resources, it was only available online and in English.

How the Survey was Distributed 

We were aware that any public promotion of the survey would be likely to attract attempts to make the survey unworkable. The silencing of women who do not accept gender ideology is an essential tactic used by the promoters of this ideology so the survey had to gather respondents in a manner that would prevent any attempts to sabotage it. This meant that the process of contacting the target group was curtailed. A number of women’s online groups which discussed the conflict of women’s rights and gender identity ideology were made aware of the survey. Women in these groups also promoted it by word of mouth, including handing out flyers at women’s events and conferences.

Participant Eligibility 

The target group members were female and accepted sex both as immutable and the correct criterion to be used to categorise women and men, girls and boys. Thus, the target group rejected gender identity ideology.   

How the Data was Collected 

The data was collected using an online survey via SurveyMonkey. It asked both quantitative and qualitative questions. The quantitative questions obtained data using scales for responses.

The data was transferred to Excel.  

Exclusion Criteria for Responses

• Incompletion of the survey. Where some questions were not answered the respondent was included but if a majority of questions were not answered, the respondent was excluded.
• Respondents who stated they fully supported gender ideology were excluded. 
• Respondents who answered no to question 79, ‘Are you female?’ were excluded.
• Respondents who left question 79 blank were excluded.

Form of the Survey

The survey was extensive, with a total of 88 questions. Most of these questions were closed which provided a scale on which to place a response. There were nine open questions which allowed respondents to comment. The survey ended with demographic questions although the results of the demographic questions are placed at the beginning of this report.

One important improvement that could have been made to the survey would have been to put question 79, ‘Are you female?’ as one of the first questions with emphasis on this being an essential question to answer to be included in the data analysis and report. A significant number of responses could not be included in the analysis and report as question 79 was left blank.

Data Analysis

Initially a group of seven women was formed to analyse the responses. 

All data was transferred from Survey Monkey to Microsoft Excel. Excel was used to analyse the quantitative data. Themed coding was used to analyse the qualitative data using QDA Miner Lite developed by Provalis Research. The report author then studied all responses to the open questions to further identify the impact of gender identity ideology on the mental health and wellbeing of women who reject the ideology. 

Responses where a majority of questions were not answered were removed before analysis. 

The target group was women who did not accept that sex should be replaced by the concept of gender identity to categorise women and men. One of the demographic questions asked if the respondent was female. Those who answered no to this question amounted to 33 and were excluded along with those who left the question of their sex blank as it was not possible to know if they were women and therefore belonged to the target group.

Respondents who stated they were not critical in any way of gender identity ideology and instead were fully in support of it were also removed as these did not belong to the target group. This group was small and was easily identified as their comments used derogatory language about the researchers and clearly stated that they supported gender ideology. Where responses suggested that a respondent was supportive of gender ideology but it was not certain, if they answered yes to the question of whether they were female, they were included for analysis. 

After removing respondents who said they were not female, left the question blank, left most of the questions unanswered or who stated their full support of gender identity ideology, 2,943 respondents remained.

In addition to the results of the themed coding, issues that emerged from the comments were given individual consideration to garner further insight into the mental health and wellbeing impact of gender identity ideology on the target group. 

Responses to the open questions were selected to be published by the author of the report. Those which were not selected to be published were not included due to respect for anonymity, there being too many typing errors, and other material issues. Where errors do not call into question the content of the comment, these have been published. A majority of responses have been published. 

This initial report is written by one of the founders of WiT who has extensive experience as a mental health activist and a radical feminist and is a lesbian. It is aimed at both a general audience and policy makers. As the data is vast and covers a wide range of issues, there is potential for further reports to follow. 

Due to the secrecy with which the survey had to be distributed, it is not possible to calculate the response rate as we do not know how many women received the invitation to complete the survey. It is reasonable to believe that the response rate was high as distribution was limited to a small number of women’s groups and gatherings.