Gender is not a Bool

The Concept

Legacy systems store gender in binary terms. Gender is not, and never has been, restricted to ‘M/F’.

Notes

• M/F/Prefer not to say
  • still inadequate and oppressive, assumes gender variance is reticence to ‘reveal’ some ‘true’ gender
• M/F/Other/Prefer not to say
  • just about adequate
  • But if you ACTUALLY need gender data (hint: you probably don’t), why would you arbitrarily limit the precision of data - Especially on so-called ‘diversity monitoring’ forms - If ‘Other’ is used, strong suggestion of multi-selection and self-description

Mentions

• “defining the gender category with a binary value has already introduced bias into the system.” ➡