Edwards, Marissa K

Lo, Kevin D

Pervez, Adam

English

Purdue E-Pubs

Dismantling Bias Conference Series What is Genuine Allyship: An Exploration of Transgender Workers' Job Attitudes and Experiences Adam Pervez Mississippi State University, apervez@meridian.msstate.edu Kevin D. Lo University of San Fransisco, kdlo@usfca.edu Marissa K. Edwards University of Queensland, m.edwards@business.uq.edu.au Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgg Recommended Citation Pervez, Adam; Lo, Kevin D.; and Edwards, Marissa K. () "What is Genuine Allyship: An Exploration of Transgender Workers' Job Attitudes and Experiences," Dismantling Bias Conference Series: Vol. 3 : Iss. 11, Article 4. Available at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgg/vol3/iss11/4 This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact epubs@purdue.edu for additional information.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Although transgender and gender non-conforming individuals are gaining moreacceptance, this community lags other marginalized communities with regard to acceptance,attitudes, and rights (Gilroy et al., 2021). For example, workplace discrimination on the basis ofrace was federally banned in 1964, but transgender individuals gained this right in 2020 on theheels of being prohibited from joining the military under the Trump administration. Although thepercentage of individuals who identify as transgender is significantly smaller than othermarginalized communities, the struggles they face have led to innumerable challenges in life andat work, culminating in a 41% attempted suicide rate for transgender individuals (Grant et al.,2011). Suicide rate is lowest among employed individuals, even though 90% of transgenderworkers report harassment at work, and highest for individuals working in the informal sector(Grant et al., 2011). Moreover, transgender individuals actively avoid discrimination at work byhiding their gender or transition, delaying transition, or changing jobs (Thoroughgood et al.,2017).Our review of the management literature revealed a paucity of research on transgenderissues. There is a propensity for scholars to study the LGBTQ+ community as a monolith (Ruggset al., 2013; Sawyer et al., 2016). Robinson and colleagues (2017) issued a call to action to centertransgender issues in management education. While issues around gender, sex, and sexuality arefrequently grouped together under the broad umbrella of LGBTQ+, they advocate decouplingtrans issues centered around gender and sex from LGB issues related to sexual orientation.Thoroughgood and colleagues (2017) examined the role of paranoid cognition and itsrelationship to transgender individuals’ perceptions of discrimination at work and its impact onjob satisfaction, turnover intentions, and wellbeing. Finally, Waite (2021) found that genderdiverse federal employees in Canada experience far more harassment and discrimination thancisgender employees.Outside of these few articles, however, there are no other studies to our knowledge thatexplore the trans experience at work. This dearth is notable given the strong push towards moreinclusivity within companies and as a society. Specifically, given the discrimination, paranoia,and safety fears that many transgender employees experience (Thoroughgood et al., 2017), whatcan organizations do to foster more allyship and support for transgender workers? To answer thisquestion, we take a quantitative and qualitative approach to arrive at a more completeunderstanding of the transgender workforce and their needs. Quantitatively, we measureworkplace variables such as organizational commitment, climate for inclusion, burnout, andengagement. We also measure workgroup inclusion to assess belonging and uniqueness. Giventhe variance in the transgender experience, we will capture whether an individual has disclosedtheir transgender status and whether they present as the gender they identify with at work.While this approach might suggest some important, significant relationships, we alsobelieve in the importance of centering voices and experiences that might otherwise bemarginalized. To this end, we are also conducting semi-structured, qualitative interviews oftransgender individuals to give voice to their experiences and assess commonalities across whatthey consider genuine allyship. Our thoughts on starter questions to center trans voices are: 1)what does trans inclusion look like to you? 2) how have organizations fared with trans inclusionup to this point? 3) how can cisgender individuals be better allies to the trans community?                                                                                                                                                                                   Lastly, we hope that we will have enough trans individuals to interview such that wemight be able to think about intersectional identities and how those might imply different typesof allyship. According to the Human Rights Campaign, as of November 9, 2021 there have been45 homicides of transgender or gender non-conforming individuals this year (Powell, 2021). Thewebsite goes on to report that in previous years, the majority of these deaths were of Black orLatinx transgender women. It seems fairly intuitive that a White trans man has a different livedexperience than a Black trans woman. We hope that we might be able to explore theseexperiences more fully and how these intersectional identities affect job attitudes, satisfaction,and the experience of transitioning.We hope that amplifying transgender voices will facilitate the creation of more inclusivespaces. While there hasn’t been much work done in this area up to this point, we believe that thisproject will start to fill that void and lead to a rich pipeline of research in this critical area.

What is Genuine Allyship: An Exploration of Transgender Workers\u27 Job Attitudes and Experiences

https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1148&context=cgg

What is Genuine Allyship: An Exploration of Transgender Workers\u27 Job Attitudes and Experiences

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Purdue E-Pubs