Itâs hard finding work right now, but for transfolk itâs even worse. A 2009 study concludes transgender people are âtwice as likely to be unemployed as other Americans, and face even higher rates of unemployment if theyâre people of color.â And donât even get us started about applying for health benefits.
When Jetta, a transwoman, openly began transitioning at her university job, her co-workers stopped talking to her or tiptoed around the subject. âIt was almost worse than the awkward, intrusive questions I get asked. No one likes being the elephant in the room,â Jetta says. âThey were afraid if they said something and I went to HR and said Iâd been made to feel awkward, theyâd be forced to attend a seminar. They were more afraid of that, a seminar on tolerance, than even losing their jobs.â
So to find a more comfortable and accepting workplace, she relocated to San Francisco. But a lot of businesses arenât hiring, and acknowledging her trans-identity during interviews often felt like a liability, especially without ENDA protecting her from discrimination.
âEvery job interview becomes a poker game,â Jetta says. âThey always ask about your private life⌠You either have to lie to hide your identity, and I cannot lie about who I am, or you tell them and find out that they didnât want to know.â
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Then thereâs the case of Riley, a 28-year-old transman applying for unemployment benefits after losing his job as a New York teacherâs aide. His New York State license identifies him as male, but his Social Security card and Georgia birth certificate both identify him as female. Because federal programs like Medicaid require oneâs gender to match on their ID and paperwork (just like they do for names and social security numbers, duh), sorting out this very basic unemployment benefit suddenly became a humiliating and protracted ordeal with lots of questions about his trans history. In the end, he had to accept a Medicaid card listing him as femaleâdespite his male identityâjust so to receive care.
The Social Security Administration still requires trans people to undergo gender reassignment to officially change genders, but the administration isnât clear on what sort of surgery, or its extremes, one needs. And howâs one supposed to afford gender reassignment surgery anyway when they canât get employer-sponsored health coverage to begin with?
BeckyJuro
This is a great example of why ENDA is needed even in jurisdictions where LGBT’s already have workplace protections on the books. Even when you can get a job as a transperson in this economy, you can generally forget about ever being promoted getting a raise. You’ll be hired at the lowest level and that’s where you’ll stay, no matter how good you are, unless it is to the advantage of the company to promote you or retain you (rare). Mostly they hire you to comply with the law, but they will have no interest in encouraging your continued employment.
gina
While ENDA is certainly an important piece of legislation for any kind of national consistency when it comes to anti-discrimination policies, it won’t really prevent most of the kinds of exclusion which is occurring in these situations. Agree, they need to change the Social Security markers to either make them non-available to employers or to allow people to change them the way they’ve made a good first step forward with changing passports.
Both would be improvements, but much of the issues the trans community faces vis a vis employment would sadly remain.
wannabegay2
i saw a year ago this really nice lady applying for a job at the starbucks in my neighborhood… she went twice to interviews and she didnt get the job. i felt sorry for her. and thats when i truly understood the struggle of trans people. đ
Fitz
Sometimes it just makes me sad and angry that this is even an issue still. Can’t we evolve to not worrying about other people’s gender expression for a job? Is that really too much?
Syl
@Fitz: People are either insecure, or buy into this insane theology which dictates that all GLBT people are Satan’s pawns in some cosmic chess game. Even if employers and co-workers were 100% trans and gay friendly there’d still be hiring discrimination in hiring, especially in areas with a conservative consumer base, because businesses would not want to be associated us “immoral deviants”.