Omission of sexuality from census upsets LGBTI groups

The 2018 census will not feature any questions on sexual orientation or gender identity, despite a new Green Party statistics minister.

But minister James Shaw is confident a new standard would be implemented long before the following census in 2023.

The census as it stands does not ask about sexual orientation or gender identity – instead simply providing a twocategory gender question.

LGBTI activists have long complained about the omission, saying their community is under-researched and as a result funding for rainbow programmes is difficult to allocate.

‘‘We need to know the size and location of our community,’’ Rainbow Youth executive director Frances Arns said.

‘‘Rainbow organisations are quite underfunded and the statistics would help us highlight to those in control of funding that there is huge need in our community. The data you get from the census is incomparable.’’

Shaw said it was already far too late to change anything about the 2018 census – and even if he wanted to, that would be inappropriate.

‘‘The Government Statistician is independent of the Government, and this is important to ensure we have highquality statistics,’’ Shaw said.

‘‘I have been advised that the decisions taken by the Government Statistician and her officials were made entirely on statistical grounds.’’

Statistics New Zealand ran a series of tests on a third gender option and found that erroneous or deliberately inaccurate answers made the data unreliable.

Arns rejected this, saying the wider community were much more tolerant of late.

‘‘We don’t see how this is any different to other multi-faceted concepts like ethnicity or religion,’’ Arns said.

Statistics New Zealand will be including a question on sexual orientation in the 2018 General Social Survey, a face-toface

‘‘Rainbow organisations are quite underfunded and the statistics would help us highlight to those in control of funding that there is huge need.’’

Rainbow Youth executive director Frances Arns

survey of 8000 people aged 15 and over.

That question will ask ‘‘which of the following options best describe how you think or yourself?’’

The available answers will be ‘‘heterosexual or straight, gay or lesbian’’ and ‘‘bisexual’’. An ‘‘other’’ option will be allowed and respondents will be able to refuse to answer.

Statistics New Zealand labour market and household statistics senior manager Diane Ramsay said there was still no agreed-upon international standard for a gender identity question.

‘‘While it is recognised there is a need for this information, more work is required to develop suitable questions that work in the New Zealand context. Internationally there is a lot of development work being done and Stats NZ are actively engaged in this,’’ Ramsay said.

‘‘In addition, the sample size of the General Social Survey is relatively small [8000 people], which means that the small number of gender diverse people is unlikely to be well measured by this survey.’’

Shaw said was confident that we’ll have ‘‘much better and more accurate sexual orientation data available in the near future’’. He had asked for advice on the issue soon after taking office.