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Changing sex registration

Since 1 July 2014, adults in the Netherlands can have their sex registration in the Personal Records Database (BRP) changed. Until now this requires a statement from an expert and a request to the registrar of births, deaths and marriages. A legislative proposal to abolish that expert statement and adopt self-identification as the basis is in preparation. This page describes the current legal procedure and adds a few remarks that are often missing in mainstream information.

What does the sex registration regulate?

The sex registration is the M or F entry in the BRP. At birth this entry is based on observation of the biological sex and is then used as a legal anchor for, among other things, passports, pension age, medical screening (such as the cervical cancer screening programme), CBS statistics and sex-based legislation. The registration therefore has not only a symbolic function but also administrative and epidemiological consequences.

The current procedure (since 2014)

The procedure is laid down in article 1:28 of the Civil Code and consists of the following steps:

• You apply for an expert statement from a designated psychologist or doctor. This states that you have the conviction of belonging to the other sex and that this conviction is expected to be lasting.
• You submit a request to the registrar of your municipality of birth (or, for those born abroad, the municipality of The Hague).
• After processing, the birth certificate is supplemented with a later entry and the BRP is updated.
• Identity documents are not renewed automatically; you apply yourself for a new passport or identity card.

From age 16, young people can submit a request independently; for younger children a court procedure is required.

Proposed legislative change: self-identification

The government submitted a legislative proposal in 2021 to abolish the expert statement and drop the age limit of 16. A change would then take place via a simple statement at the municipal office, possibly with a brief cooling-off period. The proposal is contested and the parliamentary handling is stalling. Critics — including lawyers, women's organisations and parts of the care field — point to the following:

• Loss of an independent check: the expert statement forms a minimum safeguard that the choice is considered and lasting. Without that check, the legal registration shifts to pure self-declaration.
• Consequences for minors: dropping the age limit touches on a life phase in which identity experience is highly fluid. Research (e.g. Steensma 2013) shows that a substantial proportion of children with gender variance again identifies with their birth sex after puberty.
• Risk of misuse: although the number of malicious applications is presumably small, every filter is absent for situations in which the change is used strategically (for instance to gain access to sex-based provisions).

Consequences for statistics and sex registration

The more legal registrations are decoupled from biological sex, the less usable the BRP becomes for research in which sex is relevant: epidemiology, medical research, crime statistics, pay-gap analysis, health screening. The CBS has pointed to this in information materials. In some British and Scottish reports it later turned out that crime statistics were distorted because suspects were registered on the basis of self-declared gender. A transparent separation between legal gender and biological sex in datasets is an issue that is still little discussed in the Dutch debate.

Consequences for sex-based provisions

A changed sex registration has legal effect for access to women's shelters, prison placement, sports categories and medical screening programmes. In the United Kingdom and the United States, several cases are known in which this access produced tension with the safety or fairness of existing provisions. In the Netherlands little systematic research has been done on this; proponents of self-identification call the risk limited, critics point out that the absence of data is not the same as the absence of a problem.

Practical consequences of a change

• Identity documents (passport, driving licence, identity card) must be renewed separately.
• Diplomas and previously issued official documents remain unchanged unless the institution has a correction procedure.
• Medical registrations (such as invitations for population screenings) run via the BRP and can after the change no longer be in line with biological sex.
• The name does not change automatically; that is a separate procedure. See Name change.