Celebrating Pride Season and Going Beyond the Binary – Women's Health Research Institute

Julia Santana Parrilla and Heather McCain Featured on Leaders Talk Podcast

In this episode of Leader Talks with Sartaj Sarkaria, WHRI Qualitative Research Analsyst, Julia Santana Parrilla and Heather McCain, Founder and Executive Director of Live Educate Transform Society (LETS) discuss how research, policy, and workplace systems can unintentionally exclude the people they are meant to support – and how researchers and policymakers can do better.

In the episode, Julia reflects on her experience as a Project Researcher in the development of the Beyond the Binary guide. Heather discusses their experience as a member of the Beyond the Binary Community Task Force, and how the project benefitted from direct engagement with community members who are often left out of, or not fully accounted for, in health research.

Both share some of the personal experiences that shaped their commitment to DEIA work and explain how the Beyond the Binary in Canada guide examines cisnormative and heteronormative assumptions embedded in women’s health research.

They explore the real-world impact of biased systems and research, from barriers to diagnosis and accommodation to inequitable workplace practices and inaccessible services.

Listen to the full episode on Leader Talks and share widely with your community.

More about Beyond the Binary in Canada

This Pride Season, we are celebrating the continuing impact of Beyond the Binary.

Developed by the Women’s Health Research Institute in collaboration with the Partnership for Women’s Health Research Canada (PWHR), BTB has become a nationally recognized resource advancing gender equitable approaches across all facets of health research.

The Beyond the Binary guide goes beyond gender-inclusive language to bridge the gap between language and practice. Beyond the Binary doesn’t just instruct researchers on what to say, but provides practical, actionable advice for how to meaningfully include participants from across the gender spectrum throughout the research process.

The Beyond the Binary in Canada guide offers nationally relevant, community-informed guidance for all researchers. It includes suggestions, drawing on examples taken from real research experience, for meaningful consideration of cisgender women, as well as trans, non-binary, Two-Spirit, gender non-conforming, gender creative, and other gender-diverse people.

Promoting gender equity in research means more than representation—it involves the meaningful acknowledgment, engagement, and integration of gender-diverse people at every stage of the research process, from design to implementation to knowledge sharing