Wanted - Examples of issues caused by gathering data on gender rather than sex

[MilkChocolateHobNob]

The Public Accounts Committee is carrying out an enquiry into challenges using data across government:

www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/public-accounts-committee/inquiries/parliament-2017/inquiry37/

Members of the public have until this Thursday (11th) to make written submissions so, if anyone has any comments or examples of issues caused by government departments using self-identified gender rather than sex in its statistics, please submit a response. It doesn't need to be a comprehensive response covering all possible issues, as I think that would be a bit challenging given the deadline but hopefully if a few of us raise this issue with a range of examples, that will give them something to think about.

The rape convictions would be the big one. Haven't they quadrupled or worse?

Following. Will have a think and submit something.

I’ve been thinking about this because my employer has, by sleight of hand, rebadged the sex data field in our HR system as ‘gender’ and I wondered if that would effectively prevent a female employee from bringing a sex discrimination case under EA2010. If my employer has ceased recording sex, how would that employee request data that would support their case or the employer provide data to defend it? The employer could just shrug and say “sorry, we don’t collect data on sex so we can’t provide a breakdown of pay/shift pattern/whatever by sex.” Gender is not capturing the same thing at all. Would the courts or a tribunal then find in the employee’s favour or the employer’s?

Recording violent crimes, actually committed by men, as being done by women, because those male criminals say that they identify as women.

National health screening programmes (breast, cervical cancer etc) were intended to draw data from the phenotypic sex data field, not the 'current gender' field to call people for screening.
There's a specific NHS hazard log warning of the dangers of using gender data instead of sex data and the ensuing health risk, and not just referencing the screening programmes.

However the sex data has been deleted in the NHS database and now there ONLY exists gender data.

So now some people are called for the wrong screen, or are missed entirely. Despite a national policy that clearly intended to avoid this scenario.

This also means that ANY medical analysis drawn from the NHS database which relates to sex differences (eg male Vs female heart attack outcomes etc) is corrupted with gender data, as there is no way to know who is actually of each sex and who is not (but identifies etc)

Potentially this may also corrupt future reference ranges if they are derived from datasets this way. Imagine determining new normal ranges for say, haemoglobin levels in women by analysing data, but without knowing what portion of the dataset is actually men.

In addition with medical data, I’d query matched controls for both clinical trials and studies. It’s well known that some medications/treatments work better for one sex than the other. If we can’t differentiate then we have no way of knowing whether a drug that seems to work actually only works on men, for example. Goes for both clinical trials of prospective treatments, and data studies to gauge efficacy of existing treatments.

Also applies to any tissue taken from something like the Biobank for research purposes.

Accident recording might be an issue. If, say, fatalities are higher among women than men due to seatbelts or airbags being designed with male bodies in mind, including transwomen in the figures is going to make cars appear less lethal.

As an addendum to what barracked stated, it is falling upon GP practices to realise that the gender field is not the same as a person's sex and specifically forward them for the screening they need. Indeed they are liable if they get missed in the screening and an adverse event.

Further to this it can cause major issues if a person is not up front about this as sometimes they aren't. There was a test case where a transwoman was referred to surgeons, and complained that they should not have had access to the fact she was undergoing gender reassignment. The judge ruled that this was unlawful sharing of data and resulted in a fine, despite being between medical professionals AND DIRECTLY AFFECTING WHAT IS IN THE ABDOMEN TO CAUSE PAIN!!

So imagine an emergency situation, easily possible the gender information to be sucked into the decision making process...

Are there examples in Criado Perez’s ace new book?

Maybe Canada has some examples?

This person's baby died because they claimed to be a pregnant man and the emergency nurse therefore didn't act immediately and awaited a pregnancy test result first. If this person had said they were a pregnant women, they would have been treated correctly and the tragic results might have been avoided. May the baby rest in peace.

www.google.com/amp/s/metro.co.uk/2019/05/20/pregnant-transgender-mans-baby-died-because-nurse-didnt-realize-he-was-in-labor-9613972/amp/

I'm very much hoping to send something along to this - it would be excellent if the nurse (?) who wrote the well-documented piece on NHS data is submitting her work.

This is on gender identity not gender but still relevant I think.

Up from previous figures of 125, of which 60 were sex offenders.

“The latest MoJ figures, from November last year, said there were 139 transgender prisoners in 44 jails. Of the 42 in women’s jails, 22 were men who identified as female, while in male prisons 92 of the 97 were men identifying as women.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/07/09/one-50-prisoners-identify-transsexual-first-figures-show-amid/?WT.mcid=tmggsharetw