Sex, Lies and Statistics: Why We Need Evidence-Based Policy on Sex and Gender

One of the key battles in the gender wars has raged around the wisdom of collecting data on sex.Some argue that knowledge of one's biological sex is, in most situations, irrelevant and that self-reported gender identity holds most importance for understanding society.Others foresee harmful consequences in letting biological sex slip through the cracks and argue that in order to move towards a less misogynistic world, resisting the erasure of femaleness in statistics is paramount.Heated emotions have prevented balanced discussion from flourishing in the media and academia. Sociologist Alice Sullivan explains why we are losing data on sex, and why we still need it as much as ever.She explains how even small numbers of people being misclassified according to their sex can lead to paradoxically large errors in data analysis.The differences between the sexes are a fundamentally important factor for analysis of demography, physical and mental health, crime, education, employment, religion, a