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Recording data – particularly crime data – by “gender” rather than by sex, undermines the reliability of statistics in general.

Sex is a powerful predictor of almost every aspect in social life, including education, employment, crime, and physical and mental health. It is difficult to think of an area of life where sex is not a decisive factor. 

As British journalist Caroline Criado Perez has pointed out, if data is not collected for women as well as for men, then systems – be it transportation, medicine and medical devices,  or tax structures and consumer products – tend to ignore the needs of women.

Increasingly, accurate data collection on sex is being undermined by the conflation of sex with “gender” and “gender identity”.

The Federal Statistical Office (FSO) of Switzerland carries out a population census on a yearly basis. It primarily uses cantonal, municipal and federal registers to collect information. The FSO’s definition of sex was originally based on biological characteristics, later on a court judgement. We asked the FSO whether the definition of sex in statistics has changed since the implementation of the new simplified gender change recognition process in 2022, which allows individuals to change their name and sex in the civil status register by a simple declaration. The FSO answered that the “sex registered at the civil registry” is relevant, which can differ from biological sex. As a result, statistics are now flawed, because the category of women now includes men.

In crime statistics, the sex of criminals is therefore also based on the “sex registered in the civil registry”. Labelling male-perpetrated crime as female-perpetrated crime is not only inaccurate, it can also have a severe negative impact on the victims of these crimes. No woman, under any circumstances, should have to endure the criminal justice system referring to her male rapist as a “woman”.

Surveys based on police data are vital tools for researchers and policy makers who aim to understand the frequency and characteristics of crime in Switzerland. By changing sex data from sex to “gender identity”, the government is undermining the reliability of crime statistics. 

Femina Helvetica believes that sex is a key demographic variable, and that collecting high quality, robust data on sex is critical to effective policy-making across a wide range of fields, from health and justice to education and economy. It enables policy makers to measure and address disparities between women and men, and girls and boys. The government should have a strong interest in promoting high-quality data on sex, both in its role as a funder of research and as a producer and user of statistics.

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Links to supporting documentation of this issue.

1. Caroline Criado Perez, Invisible Women: exposing data bias in a world designed for men, 2019

2. FSO’s definition of “sex” based on biological characteristics or based on a court judgement
   https://www.bfs.admin.ch/asset/fr/5932434