Chapter 10: Employment

• Author: Ally Windsor Howell
• Pages: 135-153

§10.1 The Research Studies

Like violence against transgender persons, employment discrimination

against transgender persons is pervasive. A study conducted between 1996

and 1997 found that 37 percent of transgender individuals surveyed had

experienced employment discrimination.1 In 2009, a National Transgen-

dered Discrimination Survey found:

•

Double the rate of unemployment: Survey respondents experience unem-

ployment at twice the rate of the population as a whole.

•

Near universal harassment on the job: Ninety-seven percent of those

surveyed reported experiencing harassment or mistreatment on the job.

• Signicant losses of jobs and careers: Forty-seven percent had experi-

enced an adverse job outcome, such as being red, not hired, or denied

a promotion.

1. Emilia L. Lombardi, Riki Anne Wilchins, Dana Priesing & Diana Malouf, Gender

Violence: Transgendered Experiences with Violence and Discrimination, 42 J.  H-

 89 (2001).

135

Employment

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•

High rates of poverty: Fifteen percent of transgender people in the

sample lived on $10,000 per year or less—double the rate of the gen-

eral population.

•

Signicant housing instability: Nineteen percent of the sample have

been or are homeless, 11 percent have faced eviction, and 26 percent

were forced to seek temporary space.2

In another report in 2011, the Williams Institute reported even larger num-

bers regarding discrimination against transgender persons. When surveyed

separately, transgender respondents report even higher rates of employment

discrimination and harassment than LGB people.

•

As recently as 2011, 78 percent of respondents to the largest survey of

transgender people to date reported experiencing at least one form of

harassment or mistreatment at work because of their gender identity;

more specically, 47 percent had been discriminated against in hiring,

promotion, or job retention.

•

Consistently, 70 percent of transgender respondents to a 2009 Califor-

nia survey and 67 percent of transgender respondents to a 2010 Utah

survey reported experiencing employment discrimination because of

their gender identity.3

The following table from the Williams Institute study is eye opening.

2. National Center for Transgendered Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task

Force, National Transgendered Discrimination Survey (November 2009) at http://transequal-

ity.org/Resources/NCTE_prelim_survey_econ.pdf (last visited July 31, 2011).

3. Brad Sears & Christy Mallory, Documented Evidence of Employment Discrimination

& Its Effects on LGBT People, 7–8, T W I   U.C.L.A. S 

L (July 2011).

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