FairPlay for Women may take the ONS to court about the Census

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They've just tweeted:

"BREAKING: We're pleased to announce that Fair Play For Women has instructed a barrister to evaluate the lawfulness of the ONS approach regarding the definition of sex in the Census."

"If the ONS has broken the law we will hold them to account in the high court by judicial review"

This is great news! I hope they do have a case.

Although, as an aside I'm fed up that so many brilliant women are having to spend so much time, money and effort using the courts to get people who really should know better to do the basics of their jobs properly! It appears to be the only way, though. And a very effective one at that... ideology and bullying tactics don't fare so well in a court of law.

twitter.com/fairplaywomen/status/1361239632931921920

The whole thing is bizarre. I've seen a couple of trans people on twitter who have been asking trans people to fill it out with their correct sex and then gender identity so that trans people can actually finally be accounted for and have services provided for etc.

TRAs are just bonkers.

Does the ONS have to complete an equality impact assessment?

Surely most lesbians snd gay men would be concerned about issues which affect their health based on biological sex. Gay men will suffer prostrate cancer lesbian women suffer uterine cancer. How can the NHS plan without knowing what the biological composition of the population is ?

“you're the ONS not a vegan cafe in Brighton!“ 😄

Does the ONS have to complete an equality impact assessment?

They don't have to, but to meet their Public Sector Equality Duty they probably should look at the potential effects of this on all 9 protected characteristics, or they are leaving themselves vulnerable to challenge.

@Thelnebriati

Does the ONS have to complete an equality impact assessment?

They have, I copied a section above. What they propose now is the opposite of what they based the impact assessment on.

Google ONS impact assessment, its the 1st result that comes up. I tried to link but its a pdf and the link was massive

I'm going to donate, too. I'm livid about this. They should be using objective, hard facts.

I’ve donated to FPFW. Four ONS to have done an impact assessment that concludes sex is important to measure then ignore that needs challenging.

I've just seen an extremely good point made by LGB Alliance, if the Sex question is based on 'what gender you feel' or whatever, it then undermines the Sexual Orientation question so we will also have no reliable data on that either.

So the question forces women to sign up to gender identity, the sexual orientation question is undermined and it masks how many people actually are trans - but it gives TRAs the right 'feels' so its all good. And apparently that overrides having meaningful data on which to base decisions relating to health and services that people actually need.

The thing that gets me... The likes of Stonewall aren't advocating for trans people. Logic dictates if you don't have a biological sex question followed by a supplementary sex question it becomes meaningless. It doesn't help women, trans people or the collection of facts for future planning for all. So why insist on something that skews the data. It's bonkers.

Sorry should have said supplementary gender.

It’s bad enough that the ONS is deliberately asking for incorrect information, as the GRC records your ‘gender’, not your sex. It’s as relevant to a census as your star sign or your football team.

On top of that, there’s no way of answering the Gender question accurately if you don’t subscribe to gender-identity dogma. I don’t “identify” as a woman, I just am one. I don’t want to leave it blank in case that looks as if I don’t understand the question, or I don’t know what I am.

I’ve read somewhere that the 2001 Census guidance instructed trans people to declare their gender instead of their sex on their birth certificate too? If so, at least it means that the data is comparable from census to census?

I’m unsure what legal standing FPFW might have to raise a judicial review? Also, surely it won’t appear in court before the 2021 Census is conducted in March?

surely it won’t appear in court before the 2021 Census is conducted in March?
No the ONS changed the guidance at the last minute so that's impossible.

the 2001 Census guidance instructed trans people to declare their gender instead of their sex on their birth certificate too? If so, at least it means that the data is comparable from census to census?

Doesn't make it lawful or right, it was never challenged 🤷

Great news!

And Plus grow a flipping backbone you're the ONS not a vegan cafe in Brighton! this genuinely made me laugh out loud!

I'm pretty sure you only answer the voluntary question of gender if your gender does not match your sex (whatever that means). If I answer my gender is different it assumes I'm trans so I will just ignore that question. But if transwomen says female in the sex question then says trans what does that mean?
Well done to Fair Play for Women sent several carrots.
We found do with screenshots of the questions but I'm struggling to find them.

The 'sex' question asks your sex which can be the sex on your passport (self-id), or birth certificate. So it isn't necessarily your recorded birth sex which would be the most useful piece of information here. The voluntary question on gender id however, asks - 'Do you identify with your BIRTH sex', if the answer is 'No' then you can say what you DO identify with.

So if a TW says 'F' for the sex question, and then 'No' and 'Female' for the 'gender identity' one then the assumption must be that they are actually biologically males taking the two answers together. It's a very convoluted and uncertain way of asking someone their birth sex. And if the problem is asking someone for their birth sex, why is this a problem in the 'sex' question but not in the gender identity one?

on the plus side, if the largest proportion of trans people are mtf who fill in Sex= female on the census, will that mean greater resources being made available for an inflated figure for women? (it may end up with trans people getting significantly less if they are not having their existence noted).

So, more money available for maternity services, for facilities for girls, education programmes, sports programmes....??

I can dream

We'd better keep it quiet though if certain people realise that this could actually benefit us they may change their orders to the ONS.

I’ll do some digging for them.

(It feels mad that I’m having to pay for cases like this - like I'm paying a for subscription to reality)

@Thelnebriati

Does the ONS have to complete an equality impact assessment?

Equality Impact Assessment for the 2021 Census

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/763638/Equality_Impact_Assessment_for_the_2021_Census.pdf

It feels mad that I’m having to pay for cases like this - like I'm paying a for subscription to reality

Exactly!

@FemaleAndLearning

I'm pretty sure you only answer the voluntary question of gender if your gender does not match your sex (whatever that means). If I answer my gender is different it assumes I'm trans so I will just ignore that question. But if transwomen says female in the sex question then says trans what does that mean? Well done to Fair Play for Women sent several carrots. We found do with screenshots of the questions but I'm struggling to find them.

Surely there should be a two-part question. "Sex at birth" and "gender currently identified with (if different)"

Heads up on wall of text to follow, but I saw discussion about equality impact assessment above and have spent the morning doing some research. There's a more recent document than the 2018 linked above by the UK Statistics Authority, published last week. It's pretty clear that they have judged collecting data on biological sex (‘sex registered at birth’) as not important enough to justify the ‘perceived invasion of privacy’ by trans people:

“The highest negative impact is anticipated if sex registered at birth was collected due to reduction in census response. The data need is not considered to be strong enough to justify collecting this”

uksa.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/publication/methodology-for-decision-making-on-the-2021-census-sex-question-concept-and-associated-guidance/#how-to-maximise-census-and-sex-question-response

From this paper, it appears the justification for using sex as recorded on legal/official documents also largely hinges on the fact that it replicates guidance given to trans people in the 2011 census and so provides better compatibility and coherence. Scotland’s plans to use self-identified sex in the 2022 census is also mentioned as a reason for using a supposedly more comparable approach.

Another few points that stood out to me from the paper:

• Collecting data on biological sex for the purposes of assessment of population and household estimates and projections needs (by calculating female fertility rate) was hand waved away. (“However, due to the range of other social and biological factors impacting population growth any improvement in accuracy is uncertain and likely to be minimal.”)

• They couldn’t quantitatively assess the impact of collecting any specific concept of sex by doing a representative survey of trans people, in part because of “the sensitivity of the topic meaning that the trans population would be unlikely to engage with the survey”. Nearly all of their testing relied on interviews with relatively small numbers of people (18 -52 people per study).

I think this decision is a predictable outcome of trying to appease an extremely sensitive, vocal minority over at least the last decade, many of whom have been granted significant privacy protections by Section 22 of the GRA. And it’s difficult to even make the argument that data accuracy will be seriously compromised by not asking natal sex, because no-one’s even been able to do the research to quantify the impact!

TLDR: Moving (back?) to a more material/reality based measurement of sex is going to require A LOT of women becoming equally vocal and sensitive about their sex-based protections.