About determining Genders in New York Naturalization.
Many times Indexers are inserting Male of Female based on what's been seen in the Wife or Husband box. Is that correct to do?
Answers
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If either "wife" or "husband" in The name of my wife or husband is line is X'd out, you'll use the remaining term to identify the gender of the applicant.
From the Sex Field Help:
Index the sex only if it was specifically recorded or you can tell what it was from relationship terms, such as "son" or "daughter," titles or terms, or other evidence in the language.1 -
Someone suggested the word 'Housewife" was an acceptable word. That's the only word I will accept but I haven't heard your opinion yet.
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The projects where housewife can be used as an identifier are California, Kansas, Maryland, Illinois and Massachusetts Part D. The Sex Field Help for those projects, reads, in part:
Do not assume the sex from recorded occupations such as "policeman" or "fireman." An exception to this rule is if the occupation was recorded as "housewife."
New York and Massachusetts Part B do not have this instruction.0 -
So ignore that word then for New York and Mass. then?
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Yes.
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Good. Recently I have been eliminating male of female unless exactly specified.
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I agree. Leave the gender box blank. Researchers know whether they are looking for a female or a male in their family relationships.
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The last part of the Male of Female Field help States - "Terms such as Son or Daughter, TITLES or TERMS, or other evidence in the language." That would SEEM to indicate that "Housewife" would be an acceptable term, Would it not?
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Simply put, if the instruction is not there regarding the use of "housewife," it is not used as an identifier.
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Even more simply, the gender box in New York Naturalizations is marked <BLANK> in most cases and the reviewer can change it, if necessary, by simply reading the document and ignoring the word housewife. The printed word "his" or "his wife" are generic terms used in most legal documents and not necessarily the sex at birth or a personal preference of the person named in the document.
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As @Harmon, James Bartlett later discovered in the project instructions:
"The last part of the Male of Female Field help States: Terms such as Son or Daughter, TITLES or TERMS, or other evidence in the language."
What part of the TERM "Housewife" would not imply a sex of female?
This issue is purely down to interpretation - coupled with the fact that project instructions are either too vague or totally inconsistent.
I would have no hesitation in determining an individual's sex as female if shown as a Housewife. This appears to totally in line with the "last part of the Male or Female help" in the instructions for this project.
@erutherford shows examples where instructions are perfectly clear on the subject:
The projects where housewife can be used as an identifier are California, Kansas, Maryland, Illinois and Massachusetts Part D.
But surely such inconsistent indexing with regards to the term Housewife is on a par with an instruction that might read something like:
"Always index the sex as Female - except where there isn't the letter "e" in the month concerned"!
I don't wish to sound facetious here, but just want to highlight:
(1) The queries indexers are posting, almost daily, under "Indexing" are often down to lack of clarity in the specific project instructions, or where they are inconsistent between different projects and/or at variance with generic PIs.
(2) The unnecessary problems that are later being faced (in many examples) by researchers not having more record details available, when this is not down to the record custodian's instructions, but merely due to the wording chosen by a particular project manager.
Please remember, many projects are "index only", so the researcher does not have the benefit of an image to refer to in order to gain further clarity. In such cases, unless the record custodian forbids, surely the aim should be to index as many data fields as possible, in order to be of benefit to those who will refer to these records, once added to the FamilySearch database?
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I just want to find out what I am doing is correct. It's as simple as that. I HAVE been erasing A LOT of Male's an Female's while reviewing. When I first started Indexing/Reviewing New York Nat forms there was no added instructions after "Terms such as—-" It was simple back then.
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The term "housewife" has not been used as an identifier since I've been indexing Naturalization projects ( ~6 years). There was a big discussion about 18 months ago about this and other identifiers like "fireman" and "policeman." Researchers can (hopefully) deduce that "Rose Smith", without any terms, is a female.
What you have to remember is the custodian of the records that ultimately determines what is indexed and what is not. It's the same for prefixes and suffixes. I've seen "Mrs." or "Jr." in plenty of records, but if there is no field for it—because the custodian does not want it indexed—then it's skipped over. If the custodian does not want that term as an identifier, then we have to play by their rules.1
