Open Gates, Closed Doors: The Performativity of Inclusion Policies at Gender-Inclusive Women's Colleges.

Over the past two decades, postsecondary institutions have increasingly incorporated transgender inclusive language, policies, and facilities to address poor trans student health, grades, safety, and academic achievement. While such efforts have been heralded, little research has studied trans student experiences on campuses with such policies. My study remedies this gap through an ethnography examining the experiences of trans students at two women's colleges. Since 2013, over twenty U.S. women's colleges have adopted transgender admissions policies that outline varying biomedical, social, and legal criteria for who may apply to their institution to include trans women, men, and occasionally gender non-conforming students. Data for this research come from archival research, 80 interviews with students, alumna/i, and staff/faculty/administration, and participant observation with 6 transgender students throughout the academic year. The primary question this paper asks is: How are student's academic and social experiences impacted by gendered policies? In answering this question, this research extends sociological research beyond binary examinations of gender to examine how even seemingly inclusive institutional policies may still exclude the most marginalized students. As such, this paper calls to think about diversity as a product of postsecondary institutions; not simply in terms of the identities that are listed in nondiscrimination policies, but in the ways in which these policies are implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]