NZ Census 2023 - sex and gender questions

[Thatsenoughinternetfortoday]

It’s census time in NZ and the forms are asking for ‘gender identity’ and ‘sex at birth’. Unlike the question for religion, which provides an option to object to answering the question, the options for the gender question are ‘male’, ‘ female’ and ‘another gender’ with no option to object to the question or say you don’t have a gender/don’t believe in gender.

Stats NZ have said that if you don’t fill out the gender question (which can’t be skipped online; you need a paper form to skip it) they will complete your gender for you using other data. As one tweet about this points out, this means we’ll have an “assigned gender at census”.

Also alarming to see that the official position from the census people is that ‘ a person’s sex can change over the course of their lifetime’…

There is a movement to boycott the census entirely.

It’s going to be interesting to see how this pans out.

the options for the gender question are ‘male’, ‘ female’ and ‘another gender’

I thought there were 100 genders. Or more.
Why don't they want to know or are the other genders so meaningless they don't get to be counted?

The words 'sex at birth' imply the opposite of your deduction: sex can be changed and may be different from 'sex at birth'. At least, that's how I read it. Sounds utterly ridiculous, too. What is the point of recording magical thinking? NZ must be really, really captured. Stuff I have seen online (UK here - there was a row about only recording gender on the census and the government lost) suggests this (and Australia, too).

I thought someone claimed there are 73 genders…Christ knows. But hopefully this now-pointless census will be peaking many more people in NZ.

NZ is so, so lost that there is a complete media blackout on even discussing the issues.

Richard Dawkins (he has talked about it quite often in that past year) most recent comments on the science curriculum were not covered at all until today when they managed to find someone to accuse him of ‘enabling racists’.

There had been absolutely no discussion in the media of the problematic nature of switching to ‘gender identity’ in the census. We lack both a broadsheet like The Times and a populist paper like The Daily Mail that are prepared to cover these issues. The issue is further complicated by the fact during Covid the govt. began partially funding the media.

This is the list of the gender options.

I don’t think unfortunately @FrancescaContini it will peak many because there will be no media discussion of what these changes mean.

These issues are one reason why we're not moving back to NZ, despite really wanting to while we were home last month. It's utterly batshit and I don't want to bring up my 3 daughters in such an environment (not that Scotland is much better, but at least there's plenty of pushback now).

If you select "Other" do you get a write in?

There is a write in option but unless you chose the male or female gender option it will be coded as ‘another gender’.

left this off -

OMFG at the list

This is from the GOVERNMENT?

That's absolute bullshit.

Oh dear, they really are captured. I find it strange that they think it's ok to complete a question for a respondent, if they do this what else will they deem to be acceptable to 'guess' for the respondent?

If decisions of national importance are going to made using census data then thus could be bad for the country. With a population of only 5.5m surely it'll only take small changes in data to give completely the wrong picture.

Dies NZ have self id? If so women wanting ti take a stance could put they are male. I know no-one wants to 'stoop thus low' but sometimes needs must if it's the only way to get heard.

The Scottish census in 2021 allowed for self identification of sex as well as a gender question, making the information gathered utterly pointless. Many of us requested paper copies in order to protest the futility of gathering information which does not reflect reality. Along with the poor and late rate of returns for forms across Scotland generally, it became an embarrassing sore point for the Scottish Government -

www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/hundreds-take-part-gender-critical-27753863

I've just seen this on FB

@cosmiccosmos self ID becomes law in June.

Dawkins has just left after a trip to NZ - he's written about the science /MM issue here: archive.ph/7t6Yw

That's great - I love "Narcissist Specialgender"!

I misread 'Not religious' as 'not clitorious' - very small print and my eyes not so good these days. Like very much 'Narcissistic Specialgender' I think it means a TiM.

Once again though, the census will not ask whether a person's sex has been changed. Clearly the government does not regard that as important, which would be odd if one believed sex could be changed.

They are clearly keeping sex and gender as concepts separate, as they should.

Does anyone know what was asked in the 2018 census?

The real issue is what assumptions will be made for people who don't answer the gender question. There's some speculation here, but can anyone point to anything Stats have said, rather than some hearsay?

@LikeGolddust yes I was surprised at how little Dawkins' trip was covered. I do suspect a quiet boycott because of his comments on mātauranga Māori which, whatever it may be, does not include science as understood everywhere else. It's not often someone like Dawkins comes here and yet ... nothing.

The media establishment in NZ really isn't very big, so such things could probably me arranged.

Scrumptious! Imagine the likely numbers of people in each of those categories! Many won't have any or one. The vast majority of people are being treated as the background for a theatre production about the lives of Special People.

Why would any of these chosen identities matter for anything the Census is used for, such as planning how many maternity hospital beds are needed etc.? Would there be separate toilet facilities for all these genders?

This is great.

Which FB page was this shared on?

@TomPinch this is a tweet from the census account stating clearly they will choose a gender response for you

@TomPinch see also this blog post from Soeak up for Women www.speakupforwomen.nz/post/do-we-really-count

which includes an excerpt from the census methodology:

From 2023 Census: Methodology for filling gaps for gender and sex concepts Consultation technical paper: December 2022

"We will produce a complete time series for gender. The gender variable must be complete for all people. Where the response is not complete, we must fill in or impute that variable in some way.

Gender is a priority one topic. Priority one topics, explained in the 2023 Census: Final content report, are those that make up the core reason for conducting a census and have the highest output quality need.

Where gender cannot be obtained from the 2023 Census individual form, gender will be obtained from the paper dwelling form or online household summary form. If gender is not available from either of those sources, we will use a combination of the 2023 Census sex at birth response, historic census responses or admin data to source gender information."

@SomersetONeil can I PM you the FB page? I just don't want to direct too much traffic to it.