The Bureau of Labor Statistics has announced plans to drop the question about gender from one of its surveys, and the “Institute for Women’s Policy Research” doesn’t like it one bit. This is a small foretaste of what would happen if we tried to remove the race and ethnicity questions from government forms. And contrary to the comments from the women’s research group in this story, the issue is not the quality of the data, but respect and attention — being counted separately underlines the distinct and special status of the groups in question, and if women — or Hispanics, or Asians, or etc.– were just Americans like everyone else, what need is there for an Institute for Women’s Policy Research?