Census 2023: Intersex New Zealanders encouraged to tick the box

Friday, 3 March 2023

Rogena Sterling is a PhD Law student doing a thesis on intersex identity and international human rights law.

For the first time, data about Aotearoa’s intersex population will be collected in the national census.

The 2023 Census includes four new questions with one about variations of sex characteristics and advocates are encouraging intersex people to tick the box.

There is no known collection of data on intersex variations in Aotearoa, other than some medical data on surgeries from the Ministry of Health which are not necessarily related to a person having an intersex variation.

Rogena Sterling, co-chair of Intersex Aotearoa, said there was only one academic article, written more than two decades ago, that gives any indication of intersex percentage population, suggesting roughly 2.3% of the population would be intersex.

In numbers, that means that there are at least 117, 000 intersex people in Aotearoa – roughly equal to the population of Lower Hutt.

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Co-chair of Intersex Aotearoa Tū Chapman says the new questions in the census give intersex people a voice.

“Having my identity recorded accurately is an ability for us to be more heard,” she said.

“[It’s] been a struggle for a long time to be acknowledged and recognised as a community and a part of society.”

For Chapman, it’s not just about awareness and understanding, but also equity.

“It leads to equity among funding that we may be looking [for] to increase capability, awareness and education cross the intersex community.”

It’s a way to “align our ways of living so that we are no longer oppressed by that data and those statistics that doesn’t get us to the decision-making table.”

In the last census, Sterling requested physical census forms in order to tick both boxes for sex.

“How government distributes resources [and allocates] services is pretty much based on numbers,” said Sterling.

“If we don’t have the numbers, we don’t have those resources and those services.”

Intersex will not be included under the sex or gender headings, but as a question on its own. Chapman said that, especially from a te ao Māori perspective, sex and gender don’t naturally fit in the intersex community.

Intersex Aotearoa anticipates that the recording of Aotearoa’s intersex population will be slow, as many intersex people were “probably not aware that they even have a variation of sex characteristics”, Sterling said.

There up to 40 different variations of intersex characteristics. The online census form comes with a help button that helps explain variations of sex characteristics and what intersex means.

“The other is the issue of shame, stigma from society and being hidden for so long,” Sterling said.

“In this sense, you don’t actually have to come out, you’re just ticking a box.”

Data collected from Census 2023 is protected under the Privacy Act 2020 and the Statistics Act 2022.

Sean Broughton is the general manager of social and population insights at Stats NZ – Tatauranga Aotearoa.

He says the safety and security of data is paramount.

“We’re really mindful that people might be reticent about providing their personal data,” he said.

“We want to assure them that we have really tight controls in place to protect their data but also to protect their identity.”

The Privacy Act 2020 and the Data and Statistics Act 2022 serve to protect the data for instance, he says.

“When it comes into the organisation, all of that census data is held on a secure data storage server that’s gone through lots of certification and accreditation.”

There is also the option to fill out the form online.

“Once you hit that button, no one else, including anyone else in your household, can see the information that you’ve provided.

“The data that we put out there, it’s about groups, it’s about communities; it’s never about individuals,” said Broughton.

“All of that identifying information is removed before it’s used.

“The inclusion of those questions in the 2023 Census have a massive ripple effect across many other data collections.

“That’s a pretty amazing outcome and that’s even before you start to think what the direct benefit the new data will bring.”

Sterling encouraged people who are intersex to tick that box.

“If you know of any intersex person, any person with a variation of sex characteristics, try and encourage them to tick that box.

“It’s really important to help build support for our community, for example… working out intersex healthcare needs. Every box counts.”

Ronelle Baker who is the accessibility adviser at Census says that the best way to collect information about smaller populations is through the census.

“We need information on smaller populations,” she said. “If you use a sample survey, it’s very hard to get information about smaller populations.

“Every community has their story to tell, and data can help tell that story.”