Press release: The Lesbian Project releases new report about the category of sexual orientation in the England and Wales Census

Good morning

I hope this finds you well. Please find attached for your interest a report we at the Lesbian Project have just released, identifying problems with the collection of data about lesbians in the 2021 England and Wales Census. 

Among other things, we found:

Despite inclusion of a voluntary question on sexual orientation in the 2021 England and Wales census, lesbians as a group have been badly served by handling of this question by the ONS, and there will be a knock-on detrimental effect on any research which incorporates data from the Census about them. The ONS failed to follow clear Equality Act 2010 definitions of sexual orientation, allowing blurred boundaries between gender identity, sex, and sexual orientation, and so undermining the robustness of information gathered about lesbians as a group. The ONS “made a number of errors in its measurement of sexual orientation in the 2021 England and Wales census. … There were problems in the design of the question itself, in the way the variables for analysis were constructed, in the way the data was analysed, and in the way the statistics were reported.” Many of the problems we have identified also apply to the collection of data about gay men.

The full report is attached, and can also be downloaded here

https://www.thelesbianproject.co.uk/resources

Best wishes

Tamara Burrows, Julie Bindel, and Kathleen Stock

The Lesbian Project