--- title: Gender categories (in quantitative research) description: "For so many decades this was binary: male and female. For an increasingly well recognised, and, one hopes, an increasingly better respected, set of the population this binary categorisation is no longer enough. However, this brings challenges, disupted space. This…" url: "https://www.psyctc.org/psyctc/glossary2/gender-categories-in-quantitative-research/" updated: "2026-10-20" category: All OM book glossary entries --- # Gender categories (in quantitative research) For so many decades this was binary: male and female. For an increasingly well recognised, and, one hopes, an increasingly better respected, set of the population this binary categorisation is no longer enough. However, this brings challenges, disupted space. This has become pretty complicated! I'll try to keep this to the implications for statistical analyses of psychological intervention data. #### Details ##### "Genetic, Genomic and biological" sex I think the first thing to get out of the way is the distinction between genetic sex and the whole complexity of "gender" which is so much more than genetic or biological. Even genetic sex is not binary though the variants *other*than of having XX sex chromosomes (genetically female) and XY (genetically male) probably represent over 0.03% of us, i.e. over 3 in 1,000. Chromosomal sex is not just about long recognised disorders of the number of sex chromosomes ("aneuploidy" is the technical term for having some number of chromosomes other than the typical number for the species, i.e. some number other than 46 for humans and includes having other than two sex chromosomes). It can be complicated by "mosaicism" when not all the cells in the body have the same chromosomes. Genetic sex is actually more than chromosomal sex as it's increasingly understood that genetic issues beyond the simple count of X and Y sex chromosomes, genomics, determines "biological sex", i.e. anatomical and physiological aspects of "sex/gender". ##### Gender OK so what's gender? I used to be fairly comfortable with a phrase something like "it's the psychological expression of, experience of, well, gender influenced by biology but going way beyond that". I don't think that's good enough now and I'd like to have "within the person's cultural and subcultural construction(s) of gender". We have an expanding recognition of "disorders of sexual development" in the more biological realm but also of how different cultures and different individuals have gender options way beyond "male/female" or even a "male/female" dimension and we have increasing recognition of the misery of individuals who experience their gender as outside the options their [sub]culture offers and the viciousness of much cultural reaction to this. So I know of and respect "non-binary", "other" and I recognise that people transition, i.e. have their anatomical and physiological sexual features changed surgically and pharmacologically. I also recognise that this intersects with sexual interests which are often mapped to one or more genders so we have an intersection but of two moderately distinct issues of gendered personal identity and [sexual] preferences for gendered others. I think we also realise increasingly that some people say they don't experience any sexual interests. ##### How does this have implications for quantitative therapy data? Given that gender in all its emerging complexities impinges radically on social, economic and emotional states I think we should be trying to find variables that capture it usefully and I feel increasingly that the old binary of "M/F" no longer suffices. However, there are two issues here: - the hurt that only offering a binary category causes for some (and, though I sympathise far, far less with this, the wrath that going beyond binary elicits from some) - how to use whatever categories we have. These create classic problems for quantitative analysis of categorical data: - having your data corrupted by people using categories that aren't really accurate for them - having people omit the question because they are offended by the categories or ... - ... don't see themselves fitting any of those offered, categories they feel don't allow them to answer honestly - sometimes these issues are crucial for particular subpopulations (clearly a huge issue for services for gender dysphoria) - having categories that are so complicated that a high proportion of participants won't use them - ending up not knowing what analyses of our data, using whatever categories we have, is impacted by those issues - a danger of people looking for categories that are universal, independent of culture/country - a related danger of assuming that categories that work for one age group are optimal for a different age group even within a single culture/country At the moment I see no simple resolutions of these issues and think we have to become much more careful with our analyses of whatever categories we have in our data. If the dataset and data collection method allows it I think we should use categories that allow comparison with official national statistics (which may or may not mean using the legal gender options but those from an official census or influential national surveys. However, these official categories may be too complicated for use in therapy services while the legal categories often binary and unacceptable for many services and their clientele). I think we not make it mandatory to answer from specified categories and allow not answering gender: that at least allows us to assess the rates of that decision. Where we allow opting out and have sufficient data I think we should look at opting out against age. I think it will be decades, perhaps generations before we perhaps reach categorisations that are accepted by most people within a culture/country so that we can also have good referential data using those categories that won't be plagued by the biases of misclassification and/or of missing data. Meanwhile, let's be particularly careful to respect the complexities and ethics of all of this and be very careful about calling evidence about interventions for gender dysphoria "evidence based" if that means the evidence comes from categories participants don't like. #### Try also This is really expanding on the [entry on gender](https://www.psyctc.org/psyctc/glossary2/gender/). #### Chapters Gender comes up in a number of chapters, particularly chapter 5 but I'm now ashamed to say that all mention of gender in OMbook is binary. #### Online resources None currently. #### Dates First created 19.vii.24, text improved (a lot!) 20.x.26.