The National LGBTQ+ Women*s Community Survey recently launched, a community-based research and organizing effort to learn from the experiences of women who partner with other women and gather groundbreaking data. Garnering thousands of respondents to date, this unique effort is led by veteran queer, lesbian, bi, trans, nonbinary, researchers and activists. The survey is designed to discover all we know and do not know about the life experience of LGBTQ+ women who partner with women. Aiming for 20,000 participants at www.lgbtqwomensurvey.org, the deadline for the study has been extended into 2022.
Comprised of more than 100 questions, the project team seeks a holistic understanding of how LGBTQ+ women self-identify, what they experience, and what it is like to live as a LGBTQ+ woman now, in 2021. The initiative's goal is to ensure that LGBTQ+ women who partner with womxn are better understood across a vibrant range of genders, ages, races, and sexual and material experiences. The research effort aims to highlight and interject issues affecting LGBTQ+ women who partner with other women in the policy and service agendas of queer and social justice organizations.
Justice Work, the think-tank and action lab led by former National LGBTQ Task Force Executive Director Urvashi Vaid, organized the survey project over the past three years, recruiting a team led by Research Director Dr. Jaime Grant. whose ground-breaking work includes the National Transgender Discrimination Study (2011), Principal Investigator Dr. Alyasah Ali Sewell Emory University, Dr. Carla Sutherland, an international and domestic researcher in social policy, and an experienced advisory team of leading LGBTQ+ activists, scholars and researchers.
The Survey was designed through many workshops, conversations, social media outreach and community partnerships with LGBTQ+ organizations to develop a vehicle that allowed us to gain a better understanding of LGBTQ+ women's life experiences in order to ensure that community organizations, healthcare systems, and rights organizations can better serve them, bringing invisible challenges and strengths to light.
“Existing research about LGBTQ+ women excludes so many of us because it's often centered in sexual behavior rather than identity," said Dr. Jaime M. Grant, Research Director of the survey.
“We wanted people to see the full scope of our community - all of us who did, have or do identify as women and/or have partnered with women. Hence, our study has deep, community-centered questions about identity, so that we can see people in all their nuances. We want to be able to report on what's happening in the collective as well as point out specific vulnerabilities"
Urvashi Vaid at the Vaid Group noted: “Queer women's lives are so varied and plural. We want to invite all women who have partnered with other women to share their experience of family, work, life, identity, gender, race, community, discrimination and resilience, and much more. Our goal is to bring forward real life experience to inform policy change, service delivery and action to support LGBTQ+ women."
Dr. Alyasah Ali Sewell, Associate Professor of Sociology at Emory University, serves at the Principal Investigator and data expert on the project, which is being hosted by Emory. Dr. Sewell, whose work has focused on race and policing, notes: “We don't want just the largest sample of LGBTQ+ women's experiences – we need a truly representative sample. We intend to reach into LGBTQ+ women's communities that are largely unseen or dismissed."
The survey is distributed online, available in English and Spanish, and is for anyone who has identified as an LGBTQ+ woman who partners with women at any point in their lives. The survey is also available to distribute to community groups, social networks, book groups, faith communities, sports leagues, support groups, and institutions. All data gathered is completely anonymous and confidential. It is available to take at https://www.lgbtqwomensurvey.org.