A change in gender marker applies to most government documents, including the NRIC and passport, only excluding the birth certificate (if the citizen was born in Singapore).
However due to the difficulty of transitioning early, only a very small percentage of transgender people in Singapore undergo SRS before having to enter National Service.
The person was a 24-year-old Chinese Singaporean and had extensively cross dressed by her grandmother when young and then frequent the transgender scene in her teen years.
A policy was instituted to enable post-operative transgender people to change the legal gender on their National Registration Identity Card (NRIC) but not their birth certificates[11] and other documents which flowed from that.
As a response, ROM began requiring couples to produce their birth certificates (of which gender markers are inalterable) during declaration of their intent of marriage.
[13] In 1996, a bill was presented by Senior Minister for State for Community Development Ch'ng Jit Koon before the Parliament of Singapore to amend the Women's Charter with recognition of marriages involving transexuals among various changes.
[14] Minister for Community Development Abdullah Tarmugi said that the 1991 High Court ruling (Lim Ying v Hiok Kian Ming Eric) was taken into consideration for the amendment during a press conference.
[15] On 24 January, Minister for Community Development Abdullah Tarmugi announced that post-operative transgender people are allowed to marry opposite-sex spouses.