Scottish census sex question

[Meagaidh]

The Scottish census in March 2022 will not be collecting accurate data on sex. Its guidance to answering the What is your sex? question says:

If you are transgender the answer you give can be different from what is on your birth certificate. You do not need a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC).

If you are non-binary or you are not sure how to answer, you could use the sex registered on your official documents, such as your passport.

A voluntary question about trans status or history will follow if you are aged 16 or over. You can respond as non-binary in that question.

The census is used to inform policy decision making in the areas of sex and health, equality monitoring and education. How can decisions be made on data that is not reliable?

An independent policy analysis collective in Edinburgh, Murray Blackburn Mackenzie, is challenging this, but Scotland's Census has said it won't be making any further changes.

MBM post to their Twitter account @mbmpolicy whenever they have an update and their webpage is murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/sex-and-gender-identity-data-in-the-census/. They also have much to say on the GRA.

There's very little in the Scottish press about this; I have only seen coverage in The Times.

This is a hugely important issue.

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It means the census will become meaningless. Why even bother doing it?

What about the questions the householder fills in about all those living at the address on that day? Can they too be entered as not having a sex?

Seems to me this is entirely what the census should do. If it is being used to estimate the need for services for those who identify as female, it needs to know who identifies as female. Biological sex at birth can already be estimated based on (eg) birth registration data.

@Cheshirewife so why not keep the question on sex factual, and have a completely separate question on identity, not mixing up the two?

“CircusSands

@Cheshirewife so why not keep the question on sex factual, and have a completely separate question on identity, not mixing up the two?“

Exactly, @CheshireSands.

Not taking that obvious step must mean that someone in charge very badly wants to eradicate society’s knowledge and recognition that biological sex exists and matters.

It’s so ridiculous.

Apologies, as I’ve not kept up with the ins and outs in Scotland, but aren’t they gambling on there not being a last minute legal challenge like the one that was successful in preventing the E&W census mangling the data in this way?

@Cheshirewife

Seems to me this is entirely what the census should do. If it is being used to estimate the need for services for those who identify as female, it needs to know who identifies as female. Biological sex at birth can already be estimated based on (eg) birth registration data.

Could you enlighten me please what needs are based on feeling like a woman?

And no, birth data is wholly inadequate. People move away, they move into the area, people die. You cannot base planning for what number of secondary school places or teachers you need on outdated data from 12 years ago.

And estimates for immediate to medium-term planning purposes aren't good enough beyond the decadal scale. That's why we have a census in the first place. We estimate numbers for the short term, but we need accurate data for longer-term planning.

Think about it for a minute. Diverging from estimates in the short-term is easy to correct if it's done fast and on a small scale. On a large scale such inaccuracy will cost billions, sabotage services and cost lives.

What a storm in a teacup. The info will still be accurate as only about 0000000.1 of the population will be trans.

Seems to me this is entirely what the census should do. If it is being used to estimate the need for services for those who identify as female, it needs to know who identifies as female.

What does that mean? How do you identify as female? The only people who can identify as female are those who aren't already female. Does this mean that the Scottish Government doesn't care about the 50+% of the population who are female?

Biological sex at birth can already be estimated based on (eg) birth registration data.

It really can't.

Migration and mortality are things which sometimes differ by sex, and which change over the decades. That's precisely the value of a census: it quantifies these things.

If you have, say, a large number of female people who now identify as transmen and tick "male" in the census, suddenly there will be questions asked about why so many Scottish women are choosing to leave the country and what this means for future fertility & population size.

It will also be used to plan cuts to maternity services, because fewer projected users, right?

It's OK to ADD a question about gender. It's not OK to REMOVE a question about sex.

“TarasCrazyTiara
What a storm in a teacup. The info will still be accurate as only about 0000000.1 of the population will be trans.“

Not by the time of the next census. There is a cult like trend for people identifying as trans or non binary, especially if teenagers’s preferred identities are put down on the census.

But more than that, people at present think of the census as conveying facts as far as possible. If it is encoded into the census that this is no longer necessary, the census - which has hitherto been important symbolically as representing ‘reason’ - would represent a sanctioning of official cancelling of reason.

What on Earth specific public services are needed for 'those who identify as female'? versus the very real needs of those who are female?

What a storm in a teacup. The info will still be accurate as only about 0000000.1 of the population will be trans

0.0000001 or 0.1?

Neither of the above would seem to be correct if you take the female prison population as an example.
approx 400 female prisoner with 12 legally male and not including any biological male prisoner who has a GRC.
This would seem to imply that the trans population could be more than 3%

"12 legally and biologically male " I should have said.

@334bu

What a storm in a teacup. The info will still be accurate as only about 0000000.1 of the population will be trans

0.0000001 or 0.1?

Neither of the above would seem to be correct if you take the female prison population as an example.
approx 400 female prisoner with 12 legally male and not including any biological male prisoner who has a GRC.
This would seem to imply that the trans population could be more than 3%

The stats must mean that either the proportion of trans people is much higher than that poster's estimate or that trans women offend at significantly greater rates than women - or a combination of the two. Either way, lumping trans women with women runs counter to provision of appropriate services.

We know that men with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment offend at a far greater rate than women, because they offend at the same rate as all other men.

What a disproportionate number of male prisoners with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment in the entire prison estate would suggest is either that their percentage share of the population as a whole has been underestimated by a factor of between 3 to 6 (population estimate is 0.5 to 1%) or that they commit crimes at a higher rate than other men. (There are sometimes population groups where this is the case and there are underlying reasons for that.)

@334bu

No it wouldn’t.

@ScrollingLeaves

There isn’t going to be a mass trans exodus, please stop, your killing me!😭

@TarasCrazyTiara

What a storm in a teacup. The info will still be accurate as only about 0000000.1 of the population will be trans.

You don't seem to understand data collection, statistics, demographics, the purpose of a census, what amount and type of planning is necessary to provide services to a people and how granular it must get to avoid the waste of resources and money and the underprovision of particular groups.

If this was a storm in a teacup, we would not have had over a year of debate and evidence sessions in the Scottish Parliament when experts in population planning, statisticians and end users patiently and painstakingly explained to the committee members responsible for the census law the importance of collecting accurate data on sex. They convinced both the committee as well as our elected politicians who then voted accordingly to have a sex question based on biological or legal sex.

However, the organisation responsible for carrying out the census has unilaterally decided to make the sex question a self-id one.

There was a fairly lengthy and in depth public consultation prior to this change with the opportunity to comment/argue for and against. This was the format that was finalised, following a positive response to the consultation.

10% of year 11s in my daughter's school are trans. (Either non binary or trans boys,). Even if it's only 1% it can still have a material impact on the data

@drwitch

Yeah, things that didn’t happen.

No it wouldn’t.

Yes it would!

Yeah, things that didn’t happen
Oh yes they did!

@TarasCrazyTiara I promise you they are. Its a girls school and most forms have 3 or more non binary or trans boys in it after year 10. But at even at 1% data quality will be compromised
You are right is suggesting that the overall numbers of men and women will be roughly correct; what changes is how this proportion differs across categories like occupations, regions and industry