With the acceptance of transgender people on the rise, more employers are adopting specific policies for workers who are transitioning. Julie Cook Ramirez shares one person’s story and discusses the trends in dealing with blurred gender-line realities.
According to the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s 2017 Corporate Equality Index, 82 percent of all Fortune 500 companies have nondiscrimination protections that include gender identity, compared to just three percent when the CEI launched in 2002. Such policies cover everything from informing coworkers of an employee’s transgender status to ensuring the transitioning individual does not become the target of discrimination to helping them navigate the often tricky world of transgender healthcare.
Source: Human Resource Executive, April 2017, page 29.
While it’s often believed millennials are driving the growth of transgender policies, Darrell Crosgrove, and his associates at the University of Toledo College of Business and Innovation, found workplace transgender-rights acceptance is actually highest amongst female employees born prior to 1945, at least in the university setting.
Across all age groups, women consistently rate higher than men. Millennials rate slightly higher than their older colleagues when asked, “How important is it for your employer to provide an environment that respects non-binary gender diversity?” According to Crosgrove, this widespread acceptance signifies a broad cultural shift toward full transgender accommodation.