The 2026 Gender Census is now open!
[ survey.gendercensus.com ]
The 13th annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 13th August 2026.
It’s short and easy, for most participants it takes 5 minutes or less.
After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a report summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.
If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks. Every share is extremely helpful!
Survey URL: https://survey.gendercensus.com
The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.
Thank you so much!
[ Link to survey ]
PS: You can see some regularly-updated statistics about incoming data here, with lots of demography and graphs to peruse!
PPS: Image credits, bark and grass.
I'm not sure how likely it is, but if we manage to get about 450 more submissions in the next 8 hours or so, that'll be 23,000 by the end of the day. :) In theory very attainable, as most days of the survey so far have been over 1,000!
Day 11, Thursday 23rd July 2026
We didn't quite make it, but we were only 35 responses away! 💪 Now it's over 23,000 responses!
In other news, these tags caught my eye this evening:
I particularly value submissions from people who don't usually bother with surveys, in part because I get that it takes you a little more effort than all the survey enthusiasts! But also because when you think about it that's a whole group of people who are never represented in surveys and research like this - and it's important to me to get as many different kinds of people involved as possible.
It's hard to know how the stats could be affected by a bunch of people just not being interested in taking surveys. For example, I can imagine that once you've been out for a while, participating in the same research studies/surveys over and over again gets a bit old. What if there are trends specific to people who've been out for 20+ years that no one gets to record? Maybe people 35 years into their transition tend to ditch all surveys and all identity words, and we would have no idea!
So, thank you for going to the trouble. :) <3
And also, gratitude to all the people on Tumblr (blue) and Discord (red) for answering the call to spread the word today! Look, you can see on this graph of the last 24 hours how people really stepped up when I posted at 2pm asking if we could make it to 23,000 by midnight UK time:
Plus there's a boost from Reddit (yellow) because I remembered to repost on /r/SampleSize. :) Even one post anywhere does make a big difference. I am glad I added the "where did you hear about the survey today?" question, because I get to see in real time where people are posting and how well it's working.
[ Take part in the 2026 Gender Census before 13th August 2026 ]
