What does the HESA category 'indeterminate' mean?

The 'indeterminate' category used by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) does not refer trans people, but to intersex people. 

Intersex people can have a combination of male and female anatomy and as a result, their biological sex cannot easily be classified as either male or female.  Until recently, the medical profession encouraged parents to elect for surgery on their intersex baby so that their child would conform to stereotypical male or female appearances. Subsequently, many intersex people encountered difficulties later in life as the gender prescribed by the medical profession and their parents was different to the gender with which they associate.  Today parents are advised to delay surgery until their child reaches puberty so that their child can inform decision making. Not all intersex people opt for surgery and many will consider themselves to be intersex rather than male or female.

In addition, there are a number of sex chromosomal variations which may not produce any visible anatomical variation in a person and which may not be detected until puberty or even later in life. This can include medical conditions such as Turner's syndrome, Klinefelter syndrome, XXY Syndrome; and mosaicisms whereby half of a person’s cells have one form of sex chromosomes and the other half another e.g. XX / XY Mosaicism.

Some intersex people may find the 'indeterminate' category used by HESA to be offensive. HESA use this category to be consistent with the Managing Information Across Partnerships (MIAP ) Common Data Definitions coding frame.

For data return purposes, institutions are able to ask staff about their gender using the 'intersex' terminology and then return any positive responses to HESA using the MIAP coding and terminology.