We have released the third phase of our project to provide our organizers with the ability to offer more flexible Gender Options. This ongoing project will make it easier for events to provide more inclusive registration options without disrupting any of your historical event data. We have seen an increase in events that want flexible gender options, both within traditional endurance events looking to update and from virtual and non-competitive events.
The first phase (released in July 2020) allowed a person to set their Profile to Male, Female or Non-binary.
The second phase (released in November 2021) gave event directors a way to enable Non-Binary support during registration.
With the second phase came a large caveat. Non-Binary selections were not stored in the database as an actual value, but instead, we were just interpreting “null” (a computer term for blank) as Non-Binary for those events that have this option selected.
Phase 3: Native Non-Binary Support
In this phase we now fully support Non-Binary (X) as a stored value in our database, meaning that Participants who have selected Non-Binary in a registration path will now no longer show a blank gender in the places that they used to under Phase 2.
In the User Profile, we have fully implemented Non-Binary as a third Gender Identity option, and have added a “Prefer Not to Say” option as well.
When managing Participants in the Race Dashboard, the Non-Binary Gender Option will stay selected after saving. Prior to this change, Non-Binary was represented by a null in the database. This meant that it looked like the system would de-select Non-Binary after saving.
Users registering for Races and Clubs that are not using the setting to support Non-Binary Gender selection will be forced to select a binary Gender, with a note explaining that the Race has not enabled this feature and that they may not know it is available.
We have also added a Group/Team Gender Restriction setting to allow Non-Binary Participants in either Male or Female Groups.
Scoring Software Support
Originally, we had planned on Phase 4 being scoring software support for Non-Binary participants. At this time, both The Race Director and RaceDay Scoring already fully support viewing and updating participants with an “X” gender that come down from the RunSignup API, publishing results to RunSignup for Non-Binary participants and creating Age Groups and Top Finisher Categories based on each participant’s selected gender.
Final Notes
We’re happy to continue this progress towards offering a more inclusive registration experience for our customers and end-users alike. As always, we would love to hear your feedback on how we are doing in this area as it is a constantly evolving topic that is sensitive to many.