Non-Binary Awareness Week 2025

This week is Non-binary awareness week, an international celebration of all people who don’t fully identify as women or men.

To mark this week, we’ve put together 3 key things to know that you can share with family, friends, and colleagues.

1. What does "non-binary" mean?

At the Equality Network, the definition (new tab) we use for non-binary is:

“Identifying as either having a gender which is in-between or beyond the two categories ‘man’ and ‘woman’, as fluctuating between ‘man’ and ‘woman’, or as having no gender, either permanently or some of the time.”

Non-binary roughly refers to anyone who feels they don’t quite fit in with the expectation that everyone is either a man or a woman, or a girl or a boy. This isn’t to say that they believe that men and women have to behave in certain ways, but is about how they personally relate to the idea of being a man or a woman.

While some people use the term as an identity itself (they may for example say “I am non-binary”) it is also used as an umbrella term for many other identities that don’t fit inside the gender binary. Someone who is genderfluid, and feels that their identity is not fixed or changes over time, may then consider themselves part of the non-binary community.

Many non-binary people consider themselves to be trans, but not all do. This is why we often use “trans and non-binary”, to make it explicit that we include all non-binary people in the work we do. As with the wider trans community, non-binary people may choose to change their name and pronouns, and they may also seek gender affirming care (new tab), such as hormone replacement therapy or gender affirming surgery.

Non-binary people also often (but not always!) use “they/them” pronouns. While it can be hard to get your head around using “they” to refer to just one person, you probably do it all the time without noticing it – e.g. “Oh no, someone’s left their wallet on the bus, I hope the driver can get it back to them.”

The 2022 Scottish Census recorded just over 9,000 non-binary people living in Scotland (new tab). You can read a thread on our Bluesky account about what the Scottish Government says they learned about non-binary people from the 2022 Census here (new tab).

3. What is life like for non-binary people in Scotland?

Last year we published the Scottish Trans and Non-binary Experiences Research Report (new tab), based on a survey of 571 trans and non-binary people from across the country. Nearly half (48%) of the people we heard from identified as non-binary, similar to the 2022 Scottish Census finding where 9,033 out of a total 19,970 (45%) trans people in Scotland identified as non-binary.

Some of the key findings from the Report include:

• 61% of people we heard from had avoided at least one public service for fear of being harassed, and 54% had has at least one negative experience in a public service.
• 23% had been homeless at some point, with 35% feeling that their trans status had in some way contributed to this.
• 38% were currently unemployed, and 26% had not had a job in the past 5 years.
• 86% said that raising costs had affected their lifestyle over the past 12 months, with 52% having been forced to decide between essential household purchases and costs related to their transition.

We didn’t find any significant differences between the experiences of those who identified as non-binary and those who didn’t. However, non-binary people did tell us about particular issues they faced in some areas, such as gendered services like toilets where only “male” or “female” options are usually provided. This caused some people great anxiety about having to “choose” between two options where neither felt appropriate, and for others added to their reluctance to uses public services at all, making it difficult for them to engage with public life.

The Scottish Trans and Non-binary Experience Research Report follows on from our 2016 report which focused more specifically on Non-binary People’s Experiences in the UK (new tab). Despite our previous research being released 8 years prior, little progress seems to have been made on non-binary inclusion within services, with respondents to both surveys saying that they felt let down by services which did not know enough about their identity to help them.

Based on some of the findings of the earlier Non-binary Experiences report, we produced a guide to non-binary inclusion for service providers and employers (new tab) which is still very relevant today. The guide includes top tips on areas like training, data collection, language, and dealing with bullying and harassment.