No federal law protects employees from workplace discrimination based on their gender identity or expression. Since the 1970s, a growing number of states and localities have enacted laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation.

At the same time, employers have been modifying their non-discrimination policies to extend protections for gay, lesbian and bisexual workers. Today, three-quarters of Fortune 500 companies include sexual orientation in their written non-discrimination policies.

More recently, many employers have also begun to address discrimination against transgender workers.1 As an emerging area of interest and concern to employers in America, extending workplace protections to transgender employees presents new challenges and opportunities to managers who may have had little previous exposure to this issue.

The Human Rights Campaign Foundation developed this manual to assist managers in understanding the issues they may face in implementing protections and workplace policies for transgender employees. It is based on conversations with 20 representatives of corporations that have already amended or were in the process of amending policies to address transgender issues in the workplace as well as employer and legislative data HRC WorkNet has been collecting for several years.

Additionally, the HRC Foundation elicited feedback and advice from a number of transgender consultants and conducted interviews with other transgender people about their workplace experiences.

We encourage readers to tell us about their experiences so that we may continue to refine this tool. Contact HRC WorkNet staff at HRCWorkNet@hrc.org with any questions or comments about these materials.

Download Transgender Issues in the Workplace: A Tool for Managers

PDF format, 259KB, 44Pages. Published by Human Rights Campaign Foundation.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

INTRODUCTION .......................................................4
TERMINOLOGY .....................................................................5
THE BUSINESS CASE .............................................................8
POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS ......................................15
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS......................................22
APPENDIX 1. RESOURCES AND TRAINERS .......................28
Publications on Transgender Issues in the Workplace ....................28
Select Legal Cases ......................................28
Diversity Trainers and Organizations That Specialize in
Transgender Issues .................................30
APPENDIX 2. POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS CHECKLIST............36
ENDNOTES ................................38

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Catherine Sheehy, research coordinator for WorkNet, helps monitor and evaluate corporate policies and practices toward GLBT employees, consumers and investors. In this capacity, she helps further develop and promote HRC’s annual Corporate Equality Index, a simple and effective tool that rates corporate policies and practices on several key criteria that affect GLBT people. She contributed to a chapter covering marriage in the HRC Foundation’s 2003 “The State of the Workplace for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Americans” and constructed a tutorial on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues in the workplace available at www.hrc.org/tutorial.

Before joining HRC, Sheehy worked for seven years at the Investor Responsibility Research Center where she managed a department that provides corporate responsibility research and investment screening tools to investors worldwide. Sheehy holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame.

Visit Transgender Issues in the Workplace: A Tool for Managers Download Page

Covers basic terminology, how to manage as an employee transitions from one sex to another, and laws and court cases regarding workplace protections based on gender identity.

About Human Rights Campaign Foundation:

As America’s largest gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender organization, the Human Rights Campaign provides a national voice on sexual orientation and gender identity and expression issues. HRC effectively lobbies Congress; mobilizes grassroots action in diverse communities; invests strategically to elect a fair-minded Congress; and increases public understanding through innovative education and communication strategies.

HRC is a nonpartisan organization that works to advance equality based on sexual orientation and gender expression and identity, to ensure that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans can be open, honest and safe at home, at work and in the community.

HRC WORKNET

The Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s workplace project, HRC WorkNet, is a national source of information on laws and policies surrounding sexual orientation and gender identity and expression in the workplace. HRC WorkNet advises employees and employers on the value of workplace diversity. It collects, analyzes and disseminates information to assist employees and employers in implementing policies and procedures aimed at treating gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender workers equally.

For more information, visit the HRC WorkNet website at www.hrc.org/worknet, or contact HRC WorkNet at 202/216-1552 or via e-mail at hrcworknet@hrc.org.

Human Rights Campaign Foundation, 1640 Rhode Island Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036
phone 202/628-4160 TTY 202/216-1572 fax 202/347-5323 website www.hrc.org

TERMINOLOGY

The following definitions will help you understand and explain the terms used when discussing transgender issues in the workplace.

Gender Expression: Refers to all external characteristics and behaviors that are socially defined as either masculine or feminine, such as dress, mannerisms, physical characteristics and speech patterns.

Gender Identity: A person’s innate, deeply felt psychological identification as male or female, which may or may not correspond to the person’s body or assigned sex at birth (meaning what sex was listed on a person’s birth certificate).

Gender Identity Disorder (GID) / Gender Dysphoria: A psychological diagnosis, recognized by the American Psychiatric Association, of severe distress and discomfort caused by the conflict between one’s gender identity and one’s sex at birth. Some people who experience this condition are transsexual, but not all transsexual people experience gender dysphoria or are diagnosed with GID. Furthermore, not all people with GID are transsexuals.

Intersexed: One who is born with sex chromosomes, external genitalia or an internal reproductive system that is not considered “standard” for either male or female. At least one in every 2,000 children is born with mixed sexual anatomy that makes it difficult to label them male or female. Sometimes, such people are termed hermaphrodites.

Although many intersexed people do not identify as transgender, many of the workplace issues relating to transgender people overlap with those that affect intersexed people.

Sexual Orientation: The preferred term used when referring to an individual’s physical and/or emotional attraction to the same and/or opposite gender. Sexual orientation is not the same as a person’s gender identity.

Transgender: An umbrella term referring to a person whose gender identity or gender presentation falls outside of stereotypical gender norms. Terminology related to the term transgender includes the following:

Cross Dresser: One who wears the clothing and accoutrements that are considered by society to be more appropriate for a gender other than the gender that person manifested at birth. Unlike transsexuals, cross dressers typically do not seek to change their physical characteristics and/or manner of expression permanently. Cross dressers are also known as transvestites.

Transitioning: The process through which a person modifies his/her physical characteristics and/or manner of expression to satisfy the standards for membership in a gender other than the one he/she was assigned at birth. Some people transition simply by living as a member of the other gender, while others undergo medical treatment to alter their physical characteristics.

Transsexual: A person who identifies with the roles, expectations and expressions more commonly associated with a sex different from one he/she was assigned at birth. A transsexual often seeks to change his/her physical characteristics and manner of expression to satisfy the standards for membership in another gender (transition).

This may or may not include hormone therapy and eventual sex reassignment surgery. Upon transitioning, transsexuals may call themselves male-to-female (MTF) or female-to-male (FTM) to acknowledge their change in appearance to match their gender identity. Whether a person is transsexual has no direct or predictable connection to his/her sexual orientation.

Transsexualism: A medical diagnosis, according to the tenth revision of the World Health Organization’s International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, defined by the consistent (for at least two years) desire to live and be accepted as a member of the opposite sex, usually accompanied by the wish to make one’s body as congruent as possible with the preferred sex through surgery and/or hormone treatment. This condition is not a symptom of another mental disorder or a known chromosomal abnormality.

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