Digital ID must get sex right

What's the problem?

The government is creating a new digital ID. It’s meant to make life easier, protect privacy and improve services. But right now, it won’t include sex. 

That’s a gap.

Why it matters

In some situations – healthcare, safeguarding, sport, single-sex services – accurate sex data is necessary. Without a reliable way to verify sex, organisations face confusion, cost and risk.

A simple solution

Make sex a voluntary field on digital ID:

• only included if the user wants it
• only shared when needed
• verified using reliable sources, like the birth register.

Our personal information should be accurate when needed, and private when not. This includes our sex.

Why does this matter?

Last year we persuaded the government that digital ID must not include unreliable information (as passports and driving licences currently do). It has now removed sex completely from its plans for digital identity.

But if digital ID is going to be useful and trusted, it needs the right information. That includes sex.

Health and social care

Keeping people safe depends on knowing what sex they are. Medical diagnoses and drug prescriptions vary according to what kind of body you have, not what gender identity might be in your head.

Sport and leisure

Fairness and safety for women and girls depends on protecting the female category in sport, from elite level down to leisure activities. Showers and changing-rooms must also be women-only.

Women’s services

From hostels to refuges to rape crisis centres, networks of services for vulnerable people need to be able to communicate whether they are for women only or both sexes, and recognise and record the sex of the people they serve.