The UK government defines gender as: "a social construction relating to behaviours and attributes based on labels of masculinity and femininity; gender identity is a personal, internal perception of oneself and so the gender category someone identifies with may not match the sex they were assigned at birth where an individual may see themselves as a man, a woman, as having no gender, or as having a non-binary gender – where people identify as somewhere on a spectrum between man and woman.
Based on the above mentioned concept, would it be reasonable to express gender not qualitatively, but quantitatively (e.g. as self-reported score reflecting how much 'masculine' or 'feminine' an individual is self-identified on a visual analogue scale)?
In my opinion, this is the structure of thе concept, based on the factors that influence the process of gender identification.
The UK government's definition includes the category of "having no gender" - this could not be depicted on a score between two poles.
From activist contexts, I know diverse models of depicting the spectrum of gender identities. You can find examples on this website: https://seymquakers.org/faith-in-action/growing-transgender-lgbtq-allyship/
My question to you you be: what purpose do you have in mind to suggest representing gender as a continuous variable?
Anna Klassen Thank you for your answer; defining the discrete or continuous nature of a parameter is a matter of proper statistical approach.
Vasileios Papadopoulos If I understood you correctly, you have research in mind in which you would like to correlate gender with other variables. Maybe you could use two continuous variables? One with the poles of "gender identity existing - no gender identity" and the other one with "masculine - feminine".
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