State of the Criminal Justice System Dashboard

Definitions

Binary: A division into two groups that are considered distinct and opposite.

Cisgender: People whose gender identity matches the sex that they were assigned at birth.

Gender: A person’s status in society as a man, woman, or as gender-diverse. A person’s gender may be influenced by several factors, including biological features, cultural and behavioural norms, and self-identity.

Gender-diverse: Refer to individuals who do not identify as exclusively male or exclusively female (for example, individuals who are non-binary or two-spirit).

Gendered: Characteristic of, suited to, or biased toward or against a certain gender.

Gender expression: The way in which people publicly present their gender through aspects such as dress, hair, make-up, body language, and voice.

Gender identity: A person’s internal and deeply felt sense of being a man or woman, both or neither. A person’s gender identity may or may not align with the gender typically associated with their sex.

Gender responsive approaches: Any programming or interventions that recognizes the lived realities of individuals, including pathways to crime, are impacted by gender.

Indigenous identity: Individuals that identify as First Nations, Inuit or Métis.

Intersectionality: The interconnected nature of various social aspects, such as sex, gender, age, race, ethnicity, Indigenous identity, economic status, immigrant status, sexual orientation, disability, and geography, as they apply to a given individual or group, viewed as impacting experiences of discrimination or disadvantage. For example, intersectionality recognizes that Indigenous women hold more than one identity. They are women and share some common experiences with other women, and they are Indigenous and have shared experiences with Indigenous men. Trying to understand Indigenous women’s experiences by focusing only on sex or only on Indigenous identity prevents us from seeing how these identities intersect to create a unique lived experience for Indigenous women that is different from the experiences of Indigenous men and non-Indigenous women.

Non-binary: Person whose gender identity does not align with a binary understanding of gender such as man or woman. A non-binary person may identify as neither a man nor a woman, both, or anywhere along the gender spectrum.

Men: All people who identify as men, whether they are cisgender or transgender men.

Sex assigned at birth: A person’s biological status as male, female, or intersex based on their primary sexual characteristics at birth.

Sexual orientation: This can refer to the behaviour, that is, whether a person’s partner or partners are of the same or the opposite sex, and to the identity, that is, whether a person considers himself or herself to be heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual.

Trans: Umbrella term that refers to transgender, non-binary and other gender-diverse people. The opposite of cisgender.

Transgender: A person whose current gender does not align with the sex that they were assigned at birth.

Two-spirit persons: Umbrella term for some Indigenous people who identify as having both a female and male spirit within them or whose gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation or spiritual identity is not limited by the binary classification of gender as woman or man.

Women: All people who identify as women, whether they are cisgender or transgender women.