The Political Erasure of Sex is an overarching project which aims to document the process of policy capture in our public institutions, and how it is impacting the recognition and recording of biological sex in public policy, law, language, and data-collection.

This first report, Sex and the Census, examines the work of our census authorities on the recent development of the sex and gender identity questions. It explores how the almost exclusive reliance on consulting with stakeholders from LGBT organisations led the census authorities to conflate the concepts of sex and gender identity, confuse what they are measuring, and redefine the sex question on the census as a gender identity question. This process, we show, has happened without democratic transparency or accountability, and to the detriment of the interests of people who are protected in law under the characteristic of sex, and to the needs of data-users more widely.

Sex and the Census was researched and written by Dr Jane Clare Jones, with writing and research also undertaken by Lisa Mackenzie. The report arises from research funded by Research England’s Strategic Priorities Fund (SPF) QR allocation to the University of Oxford, and was also supported by Woman’s Place UK.

Click the following links to download the Executive Summary, Full Report or Appendix PDF documents: