The Ipsos study was conducted across a number countries and examined their attitudes towards the treatment and social perception of transgender people.
The data was collected online between October 24 and November 7 of last year, and took place across 27 countries. However, Ipsos chose to only look at the data from 16 of these countries, as it felt that those countries had enough internet coverage that the results would be representative of the country.
Those countries are: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Poland, Serbia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, and the United States. It is not known how many people from these countries took part.
The study found that 3 out of 5 people would refer to a transgender person using the wrong pronouns, i.e. calling a trans-woman a man. The study also found that only 1 out of 5 people would be comfortable using the gender neutral pronoun of “they.” It should be noted, however, that questions involving pronouns were only given to countries where English was the primary language. This is because of the discrepancy between languages on how to refer to transgender people.
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However, the study found that trans acceptance is relatively high across most of the countries. 60% of respondents said that they would like to see their country doing more to support transgender people. Spain and Argentina returned the highest “yes” results in this question with 70% and 67% agreeing respectively. Poland was the lowest with 39%.
There was also a majority view across every country that the government needs to do more to support transgender people, with Argentinians being the most likely to agree with the statement, with 84%. Poland was again the lowest, with 51%.
6 out of 10 people also believed that their countries were becoming more tolerant of transgender people. Again, Argentina topped this response with 78% of respondents in agreement, but in Canada it was also 78%. Britain wasn’t far behind with 75%. However, only 31% of Hungarians who responded believed that their country was becoming more tolerant.
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The study also found that the majority of respondents felt that being transgender was a “natural occurrence.” Spain was the country most in agreement with this statement, with 64%, and Hungary was the lowest with 44%. The United States was the highest western country to believe that being transgender was a form of “mental illness” with 32%, the same amount also believed that transgender people were committing a sin.
The full results of the study can be accessed here.
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