A Professor of Social Policy has said that the proposed legislation put forward by left-wing TD Ruth Coppinger in relation to having the option of X as gender in addition to male and female would undermine the accuracy of Ireland’s official population statistics on sex.
Michelle Norris, Professor of Social Policy and Director of the Geary Institute for Public Policy at University College Dublin, said on X that the proposal was “deeply concerning” because accurate data was vital in planning for health services,
People Before Profit-Solidarity TD Ruth Coppinger introduced a bill to introduce the option of an X marker on the Gender Recognition Certificate, in addition to M (male) and F (female). Today the government said it would oppose the measure.
“This proposed legislation is deeply concerning because if passed it will undermine the accuracy of our official population statistics on sex. Accurate data on the sex of the population is vital for planning for health services and pensions in particular,” Prof Norris wrote on X.
She also told Gript that her “concern about this proposal and many other similar changes in how data are recorded by public services and particularly medical services is that biological sex and gender identity are conflated and this has led to a widespread loss of accurate data on sex.”
“Accurate data on biological sex is vital to manage existing services particularly healthcare and pensions and to plan for future development of these services,” she added.
“This is because women and men require some different medical treatment, reflecting differences in biological sex, and women have longer life expectancy than men in most high income countries, including Ireland.”
Prof Norris said that while this issue “may appear like it is a minor concern” it is “is actually very important”.
She pointed to the work of Prof Alice Sullivan , a sociologist at the University College London, who produced a report on these issues for the UK government.
The comprehensive report from Prof Sullivan highlighted the risks created by conflating biological sex and gender identity for medical care, sex-specific cancer screening and also safeguarding.
And she found that “the meaning of sex is no longer stable in administrative or major survey data. This instability is evident across key policy areas, including health and justice.”
She said that “sex is a key demographic variable and collecting high quality, robust data on sex is critical to effective policymaking across a wide range of fields, from health and justice to education and the economy. It enables policymakers to measure and address disparities between women and men, and girls and boys. The Government has a strong interest in promoting highquality data on sex, both in its role as a funder of research and as a producer and user of statistics.”
“Accurate record keeping is also vital for operational purposes, for safeguarding and, within the healthcare system, for patient safety and care.”
“In relation to data gathering,” Prof’ Sullivan’s report found, “the default target of any sex question should be sex (in other words, biological sex, natal sex, sex at birth). Questions which combine sex with gender identity, including gender identity as recognised by a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) have a mixed target. Sex as a biological category is constant across time and across jurisdictions, whereas the concept of ’legal sex’ subject to a GRC may be subject to change in the future and varies across jurisdictions. Using natal sex future-proofs data collection against any such change, ensuring consistency.”
FINDINGS DISPUTED ‘INTERSEX’ PREVALENCE CLAIM
Her findings dispute the claim that significant numbers of people are “intersex” or persons with “Differences in Sex Development” (DSD).
“Questions on sex and/or gender identity should not contain an additional category for people with DSD conditions, sometimes also known as ‘intersex’. People with DSD have a sex, they are not a third sex or sexless category, and to imply that they are is likely to cause offence,” the report found. “DSD is an umbrella term without a single agreed definition, and the question of which conditions are included is contested.”
“Under conventional definitions, people with DSD are estimated to make up 0.018% of births, i.e. fewer than 2 in 10,000. Asking for DSD status is highly intrusive, poses a risk of identifiability, and is unwarranted given the lack of analytical use for data on such a small group,” she said.
“Asking for this information would need to be via a distinct question, not part of a question on sex or gender identity, and is likely to be justified only in the context of specialist medical studies,” Prof Sullivan wrote.
Proposing her bill, Deputy Coppinger defined Intersex people as “those born with innate variations of sex characteristic(s), that vary from societal and/or medical understanding of typical female and male bodies.”
“Approximately 1 in every 500 babies is born with either ambiguous genitalia or other variations of sex development,” she claimed.
She said the UN recognises that 1.79% of people have an intersex trait, which she compared to the 2% of people worldwide with green eyes.
However, the percentage quoted by Deputy Coppinger has also been strongly disputed by experts and Prof Sullivan’s report took aim at what she said said were ‘myths’ about intersex, include “the idea that people with DSD are a third sex, or do not have a sex, and the myth that DSD are ‘as common as red hair’”.
Deputy Coppinger said that her proposal would mean that parents were not ‘forced’ to chose between a male and female sex option for the baby at birth.