Hot on the heels of heaps of other controversies regarding the national survey, LGBTQIA advocates are saying that people who don’t identify as ‘female’ or ‘male’ are at risk of being underrepresented in the upcoming census.
Australians do have the option of entering ‘other’ as their gender on this year’s census – a breakthrough, as this is the first year that has even been an option – but there are some pretty bizarre hoops that gender-diverse people have to jump through in order to record their answer.
According to the ABC, anybody who doesn’t want to answer ‘female’ or ‘male’ will have to actually call the Australian Bureau of Statistics and get a “code to access a special online form”. Otherwise, they’ll have to request a paper form, and write their answer in.
“The picture of trans people we’re going to capture probably won’t be wholly representative of the actual population that’s out there,” said Margot Fink, a spokesperson for Minus18. “For a group that’s already heavily underrepresented to then feel erased at a national level on the Census really reinforces that sense of invisibility.”
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