Definitions of Woman and Man Bill
Bill submissions
More than twelve thousand people made submissions on the Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill. This page shows what those submissions say: how many opposed or supported the bill, and the reasons people gave.
What the submissions show
What people told the committee
We read every published submission and grouped each one by whether it supports or opposes the bill, and by the reasons people give. The numbers below cover all 12,030 submissions we were able to read.
The public's verdict
89.2%
of submissions oppose the Definitions of Woman and Man Amendment Bill.
10,575 opposed, 1,285 supported, 170 unclear.
The opposition held across every group we could identify, including the people the bill claims to speak for:
87%
of submitters who identified as a cis woman or feminist opposed it
96%
of submitters with a personal connection to a trans or intersex person opposed it
88%
of submitters writing as a health, science or legal professional opposed it
Why people opposed it
Share of opposing submissions that raised each reason. Many raised more than one.
- Harms and erases trans, takatāpui & intersex people68.3%
“This bill is a violation of trans rights.”
- Unnecessary — solves no real problem31.8%
“There is no need for this performative statement of a bill.”
- Not evidence-based; contradicts medical & scientific consensus28.5%
- Waste of time & money; distraction from real priorities27.9%
“This bill is a waste of time, energy and money, let alone actively harmful and controlling.”
- Breaches human rights / discriminatory27.7%
- Culture war / imported ideology / division24.5%
“This bill is a disingenuous and predatory attempt to distract from the current government's incompetence.”
- Against Aotearoa's values / cultural erasure of takatāpui16.7%
“Legislation that aims to erase the existence of transgender people will only cause harm to everyone in Aotearoa.”
- Individual autonomy & self-determination14.6%
“The inhumanity of debating someone's gender is not something I wish to see from my government.”
Why people supported it
Share of supporting submissions that raised each reason.
- Biological / scientific definition of sex75.1%
“There are only two sexes. This is a truth.”
- Protect women's sex-based rights & single-sex spaces48.2%
- Legal clarity / common sense44.6%
- Counter 'woke' / extreme-left ideology10.2%
“A sadly necessary bill to counter extreme left ideology.”
Who was speaking
Ways some submitters described themselves, each as a share of all submissions analysed. A person can fit more than one, and most did not mention any, so these do not add up to 100%.
- Self-identifies as a cis woman / feminist12.9%
- Personal connection to a trans/intersex person12.8%
- Healthcare, scientific or legal professional8%
- Māori / takatāpui voice4.3%
- Submitted by an organisation2.6%
- Anonymous submitter0.1%
Organisations opposed it too
Beyond individuals, at least 50 submissions came from organisations opposing the bill, spanning community, legal, health and faith groups. We do not name them here, to avoid any group being singled out.
How these numbers were produced
The submissions analysed here are the public submissions on the Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill, as published by the New Zealand Parliament. We downloaded each published submission and extracted its text. This covers all 12,030 submissions we were able to read. A small number were image-only scans that could not be machine-read and are not included.
Each submission was then read by an artificial-intelligence language model, which carried out a sentiment and stance analysis: classifying the submission as opposing, supporting, or taking no clear position on the bill, tagging the reasons it raised, and noting any way the submitter described themselves. The model used was Anthropic’s Claude (Haiku 4.5). Borderline cases were re-checked by a second automated pass, and the results were spot-checked by a person.
How to read the figures: the headline percentage is the share of submissions that took a clear position, opposing or supporting, and excludes those with no clear position. Because one submission can raise several reasons, the percentages shown under each heading are shares of that side and can add up to more than 100%. Quotes are anonymised and shown only after review, and organisations are counted but never named.
Disclaimer. These figures are a best-effort estimate produced by automated AI analysis, not an official or hand-counted tally. Automated classification can misread individual submissions, and the totals may differ from any official count. They are published in good faith to show the overall shape of public feedback and should be read as an estimate, not an exact record.