The new project from Spark and OutLine Aotearoa aims to make online spaces more inclusive of non-binary people, while challenging businesses on how they collect and use gender data. 

For cis-people, navigating online spaces as gendered beings isn’t something that needs much thought. Gendered ads aren’t usually jarring, and questions about gender identity aren’t given a second look. But for our non-binary whānau, navigating the internet can be an experience of constant “low level discrimination”. Signing up for websites usually involves entering your name, email, age and gender, and many of those forms don’t include options outside of “female” and “male”. If you’re lucky, there might be a “gender diverse” option, but that label doesn’t come anywhere close to capturing the diversity of gender identities that exist outside of the female/male binary. Navigating the internet as a non-binary person can therefore be extremely alienating. Spark and OutLine Aotearoa’s new project, Beyond Binary Code, is hoping to change that. 

Aych McArdle (they/them) is co-chair of OutLine, a rainbow mental health organisation that provides support services to the LGBTQIA+/Takatāpui community across Aotearoa; they run a free support line every day from 6-9pm, as well as a chat support service and a counselling service. OutLine has recently partnered with Spark in consultation with the non-binary community for Beyond Binary Code, an online tool that challenges businesses to have a deeper think about when and how they collect gender data. Businesses can find resources on how to better support the non-binary and gender diverse community, and access questionnaires that help them determine if gender data is even required for their business in the first place. If it’s truly necessary to collect gender data, then businesses can copy-paste a customisable HTML code into their website to collect gender data in a more inclusive way. 

“It’s about dignity… and safety,” notes McArdle, who hopes the code will support a “minimum standard” for businesses and reduce the discrimination and dysphoria that non-binary people face on a day-to-day basis. 

Claire Black (she/her), general manager at OutLine, says that “as a mental wellbeing-focused organisation, we see a really clear line between not having those negative experiences… having those [gender] affirming experiences, to the flow-on effects for people’s well-being”. 

To ensure the project wasn’t “just rainbow washing,” says Black, Spark and OutLine commissioned a survey focused on the experiences of the non-binary community regarding gender data collection and representation. The survey informed the development of the code itself, and the surrounding resources available on the website. 

“The code is not the entirety of the tool,” says Black, who adds that the project “is not going to address every single form of discrimination that non-binary and trans people face directly.” Instead, perhaps the most vital part of Beyond Binary Code are the resources for businesses, which OutLine hopes will spark conversations that bring up hard questions. 

“Why is [gender] a piece of data that we feel is uncomplicated and people are entitled to have?” asks Black. “Why do we have to think about things in terms of gendered products? [There are] all these potential flow-on effects. If we’re not asking for gender, then perhaps we have to reconceptualise other aspects of business.”

McArdle adds that their “hope [is] that this space, this code, might be a contribution to unlocking those doors so that us as non-binary people, as Takatāpui people, as people of indigenous gender identities and intersex people might be able to take up our place in the world and stand in our value. And [that] the world will be able to see and acknowledge that.”

The project comes in the wake of StatsNZ’s 2021 updated recommendation on statistical standards for collecting gender data. Following public consultation, StatsNZ found that the way we collect gender data in New Zealand is often inconsistent, inaccurate and doesn’t reflect the true diversity of gender-identity in Aotearoa. In other words, collection of gender data as it stands may return misleading data sets, as non-binary people are forced to inaccurately report their gender. This essentially invalidates that data; StatsNZ’s updated best practice recommendations were therefore designed to address these issues.

However, McArdle notes that there was an “education gap” between the government findings and businesses. They say that’s where the true potential of Beyond Binary lies, because the project is “really about educating and upskilling those workforces to enable positive change”. McArdle believes this project could “be absolutely global”, adding that the code has the potential to be altered to include local indigenous gender identities. 

So far, McArdle says OutLine has seen a positive response from the non-binary community, who are praising the project as an example of meaningful corporate engagement. 

“This is how you do partnership, this is how you do Pride,” says McArdle. “Contributing to the kaupapa, to the movement. Driving conversations forward, not just putting a rainbow sticker on something after the fact.”

McArdle adds that the project is an example of how businesses can enact “deep listening” and be “open to what you can contribute to a particular movement”. They said that this is “doing it the right way, in partnership with the voices that might make you feel uncomfortable” and they’d like to see more of it. 

Some may question whether corporations are best suited to drive this sort of social change, but Black says that “in the current society, corporates exist and people work for them. 

“It’s much better to see people really pushing to use that resourcing and power for good – so long as it’s not fundamentally compromised – than it is to just not have them doing that work.” 

Additionally, Black notes that non-profits are often poorly resourced, “so being able to leverage those connections for our kaupapa is really valuable… that’s why this relationship is one that we talk about a lot, not because we’re pro-corporates as a whole, but because this [feels] like a really good model of how [corporate responsibility] can work.”

“Redistribute the resources!” laughs McArdle, who wants to urge businesses to “partner with communities”. For McArdle, the code represents one step closer to an inclusive future, one where “binaries aren’t limiting – where there’s space, where there’s opportunity, where there’s the full colour spectrum. 

“That kind of world is a world that I want to be in. That, to me, signals a world of dreaming.”