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Genders and relationship statuses ​

These two lists power the demographics module, the member profile, and cross-tenant analytics. Unlike member types and meetings — which every church defines for themselves — gender and relationship status are platform-managed: the values are set by Genius Church Manager and shared across every tenant.

Open Settings → Reference Data → Genders or Relationship Statuses and you'll see the list, but no Add / Edit / Delete buttons.

Genders tab read-only

Why they're locked ​

The lists feed three places where consistency across tenants matters:

  1. Demographics module — pie charts of male/female split, married/single ratio, age bands. If church A added Adult Male and church B used M, the cross-tenant rollup would be noise.
  2. Workflow conditions — workflow rules can branch on gender or marital status. Standard values let workflow templates ship across tenants.
  3. Statistical reports — the platform-admin "average congregation profile" rolls relationship status across every org. Free-text would break it.

This isn't a privacy hedge or a control move — it's a data-modelling decision. If a value isn't in the list and you genuinely need it, the path is email support rather than editing locally.

What's in the genders list ​

The standard values are:

  • Male
  • Female

Some tenants have additional values rolled out by the platform (e.g. Prefer not to say, Non-binary, Other) depending on the church's tradition and the regions they serve. The list you see on your tenant matches what the platform has enabled — it can't differ from the platform default without a platform-admin action.

Why "Other" isn't there by default

Many of GCM's churches sit in traditions where gender is treated as binary by their statement of faith. Adding Other by default would surprise them. We add it on request rather than ship it everywhere — that way each church gets the list that matches their context.

What's in the relationship statuses list ​

The standard values:

  • Single
  • Married
  • Engaged
  • Widowed
  • Separated
  • Divorced

These map cleanly to pastoral care workflows (a Widowed member triggers a bereavement check-in workflow; an Engaged member triggers a pre-marital counselling workflow).

Some tenants have additional values like Cohabiting, Civil union, or Common-law — again, request via support.

How they show up in member profiles ​

In the member profile, both fields are single-select dropdowns. The list comes from the platform reference table, but each member's choice is stored on their own member row (members.gender_id, members.relationship_status_id).

ts
// Inside the member profile form:
<Select value={member.gender_id}>
  {genders.map(g => (
    <option value={g.id}>{localize(g.translations, g.name, language, "name")}</option>
  ))}
</Select>

The dropdown label respects the active language. A bilingual Spanish-English church sees Mujer in Spanish mode and Female in English mode — the value stored in members.gender_id is the same UUID either way.

Why the read-only tab still exists ​

You might wonder why an org admin can see the list at all if they can't edit it. Three reasons:

  1. Visibility — admins need to know what values their pastors and shepherds will pick from when filling out a member profile.
  2. Reporting — when building a custom report you can filter on gender_id, and seeing the canonical list helps you pick the right value.
  3. Translation review — the read-only list shows the multilingual labels in the current language, so a Spanish-speaking admin can verify the platform's translations look right and flag any that don't.

Requesting an addition ​

To add a value to either list:

  1. Email support@geniuschurchmanager.com with subject "Reference data addition".
  2. Include:
    • Which list (gender or relationship status).
    • The proposed value.
    • The translations for every language your tenant uses (English required; Spanish / French / Portuguese strongly recommended).
    • A one-sentence reason — usually a tradition or cultural context.
  3. Platform staff reviews and (usually) ships the addition within a few business days.

The addition rolls out to your tenant only by default, but if it's broadly useful it may be promoted to platform-wide.

What you can do today ​

Even though the values are locked, your demographic work is unblocked:

  • Make sure every member has these fields filled in. The bulk actions module has a "Set gender / status" workflow you can run after a CSV import.
  • Build dashboards that filter on these fields — see the Demographics module for the standard charts.
  • If you use the Workflows builder, drop in a condition node that branches on relationship status (e.g. if Married → add to "Couples Ministry" group).

Why this isn't in the platform-admin docs ​

These tabs appear on the org-level reference-data page even though only platform staff can edit them. That's deliberate — every org admin needs to know what's available, even if they don't control it. The actual edit UI for platform staff lives at Platform Admin → Reference Data and is documented separately.

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