Data standards for describing gender

For the majority of applications, data standards for describing gender, especially in humans, are relatively simple, although some people do not fit biologically into the dual gender scheme either. Depending on the situation, it should be noted that some people do not want to reveal their gender. A finer subdivision may be required in medical and scientific applications. When it comes to gender, some societies have up to 10 different categories ( Amarete ). The various sex categories in the animal world are also more complicated.

The simplest application in data processing is the personal salutation in a letter or an e-mail for a mass mailing .

ISO / IEC 5218

The international standard ISO / IEC 5218 bears the title "Information technology - codes for the representation of the gender of humans" and defines values ​​for databases, codes and data transmissions in order to store the biological gender of a person. It is also required for some uses by various government agencies. By definition, the standard is intended to meet the needs of most applications that need to encode human gender. It does not contain gender indications that are required in medical and scientific applications, nor those that are required for species other than humans.

Different applications use either a bit or letters to store gender, with the letters being different in each language. In the ISO-5218, however, the gender is saved language-neutral with a single-digit number. The exact written output is then made by an application program, if necessary.

Defined values

value	meaning	Designation engl.	Designation French
0	unknown	not known	inconnu
1	male	times	masculin
2	Female	female	feminine
9	not applicable (irrelevant, not applicable)	not applicable	sans objet

According to the standard "SEX" (English) or "SEXE" (French) should be used as an identifier. This should make it clear that the biological gender is meant, in contrast to the English gender , which describes the social gender. It is explicitly stated in the standard that the use of 1 for male and 2 for female does not express any significance, but is based on existing practice in the initiating countries. A possible earlier rating is not excluded.

Zero is used if nothing is specified. Nine is used when a statement is made, but male or female does not apply. For example with intersex people.

The standard was defined by the technical committee of the Data Management and Interchange group of the International Organization for Standardization . The official English and French titles are: "Information technology - Codes for the representation of human sexes" and "Technologies de l'information - Codes de représentation des sexes humains". The first version appeared in 1977 (ISO-5218: 1977). A new version came out on July 1, 2004 (ISO-5218: 2004, corrected on December 1, 2004), in which the values ​​were not changed or extended. On the other hand, after the ISO / IEC JTC1 was drawn up in 1997, mainly Appendix A was added. This serves as an exemplary example of the current principles of “portability”, “interoperability” and “cultural adaptability” laid down in JTC1. These are particularly in demand in the age of the Internet in international data exchange.

Applications

The standard is used, for example, in the data transmission rules for data transmission and data carrier exchange from the debtor registers kept by the local courts , a general order of the Minister of Justice and for European affairs of August 18, 2003. The values ​​are also used as the first digit of the French INSEE - Number, the Chinese identification card and the Hungarian identity number, which has been in use since 1991. In government catalog data standard of the United Kingdom ( UK Government Data Standards Catalog ) two nearly identical data fields are defined for databases: The sex in the (first) Registration ( person Gender at registration ), and the current gender ( person Gender Current ), the former never may have the value zero.

Company-specific extensions

Active Entry is an identity management system from the Berlin company Völcker Informatik . Such systems link a physical person with a unique ID that is used throughout the company and in various applications, partly for easier administration, partly for better security. Such IDs are also assigned different authorizations and at least these security-relevant processes are sometimes logged and documented and stored for a long time.

In a press release on July 29, 2008 under the headline "ISO-compliant: Identity management system also detects gender reassignments", the company points out that its system is now also able to save changed genders as part of role management. You falsely give the impression that your new extension is part of the ISO 5218 standard. Such data storage in a person object for a longer period of time (after changing the first name) also contradicts the prohibition of disclosure in Section 5 of the Transsexual Act and thus data protection . The trigger for this software change was possibly the order of the Federal Constitutional Court of May 27, 2008, which was published on July 23, 2008 and states that it is no longer necessary for married people to get divorced so that the change in civil status can be carried out (expiry of § 8 Paragraph 1 No. 2 TSG).

Active Entry

value	designation
0	unknown
1	male
2	Female
3	male today (transgender male)
4th	today female (transgender female)

Other gender description standards

Other standards are sometimes used. On the one hand, English-language letter abbreviations are used, on the other hand, there are specific extensions. The categories specified in ISO-5218 are partly insufficient in human medicine and especially in zoology and biology - for which the standard was not defined either. In medicine it is sometimes necessary to be able to specify transsexuals or intersexuals more precisely, for example in medical trials or drug tests. And in zoology there are animals that can change their sex alone or always have both fully functional sex organs. With others, the gender is very difficult to determine at certain stages of development or always. Sometimes a genetic test is necessary to be sure, as in the case of penguins. Many standards, including those intended for nonhuman applications, repeatedly refer to ISO-5218 when it comes to extensions.

CDC

The system described here is part of the Common Data Element Implementation Guide and was created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (CDC / ATSDR). It was introduced for new systems on December 31, 1999 and old applications are to be adapted in the event of major changes.

Letters (preferred)	numbers	description
M.	1	man
F.	2	woman
O	3	other ( other , e.g. intersexual , transident )

NETSS and related standards

The following classification is used by the US National Electronic Telecommunications System for Surveillance (NETSS) and the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). The NETSS provides the CDC with data on reportable diseases on a weekly basis.

In version 2 of the specifications for the Electronic Commerce Modeling Language (ECML) from June 2005, which is specified in RFC 4112 and is intended for shopping on the Internet, version 1 ( RFC 2607 ) and version 1.1 ( RFC 3106 ) of Standard expanded to include the Gender field. Although reference is made to ISO-5218, it is also divided into three and the first letter of the English name is used.

Value (NETSS & NCHS)	Value (ECML)	meaning		Worth NCVHS		Value JC3IEDM		ICAO value	Value visa Schengen	meaning
1	M.	times		times		times		M.	M.	male
2	F.	Female		Female		Female		F.	F.	Female
9	U	Unknown		Unknown / not stated		Not known		X	<	no information

The US National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS, "National Committee for Health Statistics ") does not use the values, but also uses a three-part classification. The last value is referred to as "Unknown / not specified".

The Multilateral Interoperability Program (MIP) is working to achieve international compatibility for all levels of Command and Control Information Systems (C2IS) in the military to support multinational combined and collaborative operations. It is not a NATO organization, but it is heavily dominated by NATO. In the Joint C3 Information Exchange Data Model (JC3IEDM) developed by her , which is intended to enable communication from C2IS to C2IS, there is an equivalent three-way division for the basic person object. The person-gender code "represents the classification of a [military or civil] person based on reproductive, physiological characteristics."

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) allows in its standards for machine-readable passports not only M and F but also X in the data field. The computer systems of the authorities in Australia only knew M and F until the end of 2002. For Alex MacFarlane , then 48 years old and intersexual, M and F would have been a lie and fought for an expansion of the system. After months of correspondence and a request from The West Australian newspaper , the authorities decided to change the passport system, allow X and thus implement MacFarlane's “indefinite” entry in the Victoria state birth certificate in the passport. Before 2005, New Zealand used Xa " -" instead of " " . As of 2008, there were around 400 passports in New Zealand with the entry “ X” or “ -”.

There are uniformly formatted visa stickers for the Schengen area that are stuck into the travel document. In the lower part there are two lines of 36 characters each with machine-readable information, which are filled out in the OCR-B -1 font . In the second line, in the 21st position, the gender is given. If no entry is made, the space is <filled with the character " " like any other space .

NAACCR

The following classification is used by the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR, " North American Association of Central Cancer Registries "). After several revisions, it currently contains several values ​​in order to record transsexuals separately. Their social gender can usually be clearly assigned, but the biological risks (man / woman) for cancer are different and should not falsify the statistics.

value	designation
1	times
2	Female
3	Other (intersex)
4th	Transsexual, not otherwise specified
5	Transsexual, natal male
6th	Transsexual, natal female
9	Not stated

USA Census

The US Bureau of the Census only uses two genders for the Current Population Survey, and every American can be assigned to these two genders.

value	designation
1	times
2	Female

HL7

In System Health Level 7 , which provides international standards for the exchange of data between organizations in the health care system and their computer systems, letters from the English designations are used for data exchange.

value	meaning	translation
F.	Female	Woman or female
M.	times	man
O	other	other
U	unknown	unknown

X12

The American National Standards Institute Accredited Standards Committee X12 ( ANSI ASC X12 or X12, "National American Institute for Standards, Approved Committee for Standards X12"), which is often used in electronic data exchange in the USA, also uses letters from English names however, the unknown values ​​are further split up.

value	designation	German translation
F.	Female	Woman or female
M.	times	Male or male
N	Non-sexed gender is not known because observation or examination for such was not recorded or requested by the protocol.	No gender The gender is not known because an observation or examination was not recorded or did not take place due to lack of information.
U	unknown	unknown
X	Unsexable gender could not be determined because of ambiguity in external or internal genitalia.	Gender cannot be assigned The gender cannot be determined due to the ambiguity of the inner or outer genitals.

ASTM

The ASTM International standard existed ASTM E1633 Standard Specification for Coded Values ​​Used in the Electronic Health Record . It was withdrawn in 2017.

value	description	German translation
M.	times	male
F.	Female	Female
U	Unknown sex	unknown gender
MP	Male pseudohermaphrodite	male pseudohermaphrodite
FP	Female pseudohermaphrodite	female pseudo-hermaphrodite
H	Hermaphrodite	hermaphrodite
MC	Male changed to Female	male changed to female (transsexual)
FC	Female changed to male	female changed to male (transsexual)
A.	Ambiguous sex	ambiguous gender, cannot be assigned

DICOM

The Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) is an open standard for information exchange in medicine. In the standard PS 3.3 - Information Object Definitions , the field (0010,0040) is described under C.2.3 Patient Demographic Module and some other tables, which contains the administrative gender for the patient's demographic data. This comes from the HL7 standard. The standard PS 3.16 - Content Mapping Resource under CID 7455 contains values ​​for the medical description of gender. This is more extensive and can differ from the administrative gender. By default, the value “O” for the administrative gender refers to “121103” for the medical gender. These values ​​are based on the ASTM E1633 standard. The data is used in various modules.

CID 7455 & (0010,0040)

Coding standard (0008,0102)	Value (0008,0100)	Description (0008,0104)	German translation	Equivalent to the description of the (administrative) gender of the patient (0010,0040)	Description of (0010,0040)
DCM	M.	times	male	M.	times
DCM	F.	Female	Female	F.	Female
DCM	U	Unknown sex	unknown gender
DCM	MP	Male pseudohermaphrodite	male pseudohermaphrodite
DCM	FP	Female pseudohermaphrodite	female pseudo-hermaphrodite
DCM	H	Hermaphrodite	hermaphrodite
DCM	MC	Male changed to Female	male changed to female (transsexual)
DCM	FC	Female changed to male	female changed to male (transsexual)
DCM	121104	Ambiguous sex	ambiguous gender
DCM	121102	Other sex	opposite sex
DCM	121103	Undetermined sex	uncertain gender	O	Other

Until 2004 DICOM believed by mistake to use the ISO-5218 scheme for the values ​​“M” to “FC” (under (0008,0102) the value “ISO5218_1”). This was changed with CP-373 of January 12, 2004. At this point in time "121104" was added.

ZIMS

Zoological Information Management System (ZIMS, "Zoological Information Management System") is software from the International Species Information System (ISIS, "International Species Information System"). In 2006 version 2 of the software interface was documented. Gender is used in a wide variety of software parts. It is not known how the information is stored in the database. First, the Sex field appears when entering the taxon information of an animal. Output is then made, among other things, in a table with population numbers for a specific gender and age.

description	German translation	ISO-5218
times	male	J
Female	Female	J
Abnormal	abnormal	N
Hermaphrodite	hermaphrodite
Asexual	asexual	N
Indeterminate	can not be determined	N
Undetermined	not fixed / indefinite / pending	N

If you change the sex status of an animal, there is a second selection field in which you specify the reason for this change. It may have been a mistake in data entry or, for some species, a natural process during their life.

OBIS

The Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS, “Oceanic Biogeographic Information System”) was created by the Census of Marine Life (COML, “Population Census of Marine Life ”), a free database on the Internet that is supposed to represent a census of all marine fauna. The data format used ( OBIS schema version 1.1 ) is an extension of DarwinCore 2 from 2003 and also contains an optional text field to describe the gender. The entered values ​​should consist of a group of firmly defined codes. The values ​​given in the table are suggested. Version 1.1 is from July 8, 2005.

value	description	German translation, remarks
M.	times	male
F.	Female	Female
H	Hermaphrodite	hermaphrodite
I.	indeterminate	indefinite (assessed, but cannot be classified)
U	unknown	unknown (not assessed)
T	transitional	transitional (between the sexes, useful for sequential hermaphrodites)
B.	both male and female	both male and female

UBIF

Within the Taxonomic Databases Working Group (TDWG), now Biodiversity Information Standards , Group Structure of Descriptive Data (SDD), now Interest Group Biological Descriptions , work has also been carried out to integrate the overarching requirements of various biodiversity schemes into a Unified Biosciences Information Framework (UBIF) . Decisive was it Gregor Hagedorn from the Institute for Plant Virology, Microbiology and Biosafety of the Federal Biological Research Center participates in Berlin. Version 1.1 was released in March 2007. This system also includes a gender description field.

value	Abbr.	labeling	description	ISO 5218	DICOM	ASTM E1633	OBIS 1.1
SexStatus & BasicSexStatus (sufficient for most humane administrative tasks)
times	m	times	male	1	M.	M.	M.
Female	f	Female	Female	2	F.	F.	F.
UnknownSex	?	unknown sex	unknown, no information available (not recorded or not examined). Compare "ambiguous" and "indeterminate"	0	U	U	U
SexStatus & AdditionalSexStatus (extended codes for animals or clinical description of humans)
Hermaphrodite	H	Hermaphrodite	An organism can have male and female genital organs at certain times in adulthood. It is a general term that does not distinguish whether this is the case simultaneously or sequentially.	-	H	H	H
SimultaneousHermaphrodite	sh	Simultaneous hermaphrodite	An organism that in adulthood has male and female sexual organs at the same time.	-	-	-	B.
Male2Female	mc	Male changing to female	The organism starts out male and changes gender to female over the course of life. (Sequential hermaphrodite: proterandry , pre-masculinity, first masculinity). Examples: perch ; many plants; People undergoing gender reassignment surgery. This term does not describe what phase the individual is currently in.	-	MC	MC	-
Female2Male	fc	Female changing to male	The organism starts out female and the gender changes to male in later life. (Sequential hermaphrodite: proterogyny , protogyny, pre-femininity, first-femininity). Example: wrasse ; some plants; People undergoing gender reassignment surgery. This term does not describe what phase the individual is currently in.	-	FC	FC	-
HermaphroditeMalePhase	Hm	Hermaphrodite, male phase	Sequential hermaphrodites in the male phase.	-	-	-	-
HermaphroditeFemalePhase	hf	Hermaphrodite, female phase	Sequential hermaphrodites in the female phase.	-	-	-	-
HermaphroditeTransitional	ht	Hermaphrodite, transitional phase	Sequential hermaphrodites in transition.	-	-	-	T
IndeterminateSex	i	Indeterminate sex	The organism was examined, but the sex could not be determined (for example in the larval stage ). Compare "ambiguous" and "unknown".	~ 9	~ 121103		I.
AmbiguousSex	a	Ambiguous sex	The genital organs were examined, but the gender was ambiguous. This includes deviating gender situations such as gynandromorphism ( e.g. insects, one side of which is male and the other female). Compare “indeterminate” and “unknown”.	-	121104	A.	-
MixedSex	x	mixed sex status	multiple individuals with mixed sexes (The situation can occur with congregations.)	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	further values ​​of other systems	-	MP FP 121102	MP FP	-

The codes “MP” and “FP” from the DICOM / ASTM standards have not been implemented as they are only used in humans and express a politically controversial point of view.

See also

• Gender symbol

Web links

• ISO / IEC 5218: 2004 ( ZIP archive with PDF in English and French, a license confirmation is required before the download.)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Canada National Body: ISO / IEC JTC1 SC36 N0834 - Business Case and for Rationale Incorporating “Multilingual Capability and Equivalency as one of the Basic Principles, at the Architectural and Structural Levels, for the Development of the Multipart MLR standard”. ( Memento of the original from December 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. old.jtc1sc36.org, August 19, 2004, p. 6, footnote 2 
2. ↑ UK Government Data Standards Catalog - Data Element: Person Sex ( Memento of the original from July 27, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , govtalk.gov.uk, November 7, 2002  
3. ↑ ISO-compliant: Identity management system also recognizes gender reassignments , LanLine, July 29, 2008
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Standards and Liaison Committee Health Information and Surveillance Systems Board: Common Data Elements Implementation Guide Version 2.4 (PDF; 338 kB), US Department of Health and Human Services, January 3, 2000, p. 35 ff .; Proposed CDC Health Data Standards , Center for Disease Control and Prevention website
5. ↑ RFC 4112 : Electronic Commerce Modeling Language (ECML) - Version 2 Specification . June 2005, Motorola Laboratories
6. ↑ Multilateral Interoperability Program, NATO (Ed.): The Joint C3 Information Exchange Data Model (JC3IEDM Main) ( Memento of the original from June 21, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) Edition 3.1b, December 13, 2007, mip-site.org 
7. ↑ Julie Butler: X Marks the Spot for Intersex Alex . ( Memento of the original from January 1, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: The Western Australian , Perth, January 11, 2003; HTML ( Memento of the original from September 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
8. ↑ Human Rights Commission (Ed.): To Be Who I Am - Report of the Inquiry into Discrimination Experienced by Transgender People ( Memento of the original from October 22, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ( MS Word ; 1.6 MB), January 2008, New Zealand, ISBN 978-0-478-28643-4 
9. ↑ Joint consular instructions to the diplomatic missions and consular posts run by career consular officers, December 22, 2005, eur-lex.europa.eu
10. ^ North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR): Version 18 Data Standards and Data Dictionary. Retrieved August 3, 2020 . 
11. ↑ DICOM Part 3: Information Object Definitions. In: dicom.nema.org. National Electrical Manufacturers Association, accessed August 3, 2020 . 
12. ↑ ^{a b c} DICOM Correction Item CP-373 (PDF via FTP access), January 12, 2004
13. ↑ National Electrical Manufacturers Association (Ed.): PS 3.16 - DICOM Part 16: Content Mapping Resource dicom.nema.org, accessed on August 3, 2020
14. ↑ ISIS & CGI Information Systems and Management Consultants Inc. (Deepali Thussu): ZIMS - PM224 Animal Management - Version 2.00  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.   (Login required) October 5, 2006
15. ↑ The OBIS SchemaVersion 1.1 ( Memento of the original dated July 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , July 8, 2005, iobis.org  
16. ↑ TDWG-SDD: TWiki - SDD Web - Version101 - Version1dot1 , SDD1.1.zip from March 19, 2007, there SDD1.1 / documentation / UBIF_EnumData.html