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Amsterdam Centre for European Studies (ACES) ACES

Anne Louise Schotel and Liza Mügge win Journal of Common Market Studies (JCMS) 2021 Best Article Prize

30 September 2022

Anne Louise Schotel and Liza Mügge have won the Journal of Common Market Studies (JCMS) Best Article Prize for 2021. Their article ‘Towards Categorical Visibility? The Political Making of a Third Sex in Germany and the Netherlands’ provides a detailed analysis of (non-)emergence of a 'diverse' for legal gender registration for intersex people’ the jury said.

How can deeply-rooted societal norms like binary sex change? Anne Louise Schotel and Liza Mügge analyze the implementation process of the non-binary sex registration in Germany and the Netherlands, where ruled in favour of a ‘third’ option in sex registration. While German law today includes a non-binary option, the Dutch law does not. Why? The article draws on parliamentary debates, newspapers and statements from activists to follow the trajectory of the third option. It finds that an established progressive reputation can lead states like the Netherlands to take a back seat, while mobilization by activists was crucial in establishing the self-determination of legal sex on the German political agenda. This study contributes to unravelling the complex ways in which new norms shape – or fail to shape – domestic political outcomes.

Read the article

Anne Louise Schotel & Liza Mügge (2021) ‘Towards Categorical Visibility? The Political Making of a Third Sex in Germany and the Netherlands’, Journal of Common Market Studies 59(4): 981-1024.