Hostile territory: employers’ unwillingness to accommodate transgender employees

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to enhance the understanding of employers’ responses to the restroom requests of transgender employees, and to assess the ability as educators to reduce transphobia in the students. Design/methodology/approach – Subjects were 194 undergraduate business students at a medium-sized public university in the northeastern USA who were enrolled in an undergraduate course in organizational behavior. During class, they read a brief case which asked the students to play the role of a CEO in Little Rock, Arkansas, receiving a complaint from a female employee about using the same restroom as a coworker who is transitioning from male to female. Findings – The most inclusive response was also the rarest, with only 27 percent of students recommending unisex bathrooms. Hostile actions, forcing the transitioning employee to use the men's restroom, were recommended by 38 percent of those who correctly realized that an employee would be unprotected by sexual orientation discrimination law in this case and by 30 percent of those who thought that she could sue for that type of discrimination in that jurisdiction. Research limitations/implications – It would be interesting to replicate this with non-student samples such as human resource managers and executives. The use of a US sample and of a text-based case can also be viewed as weaknesses. Because gender identity is embodied, self-constructed, and socially constructed, no single research study can capture the totality of work life for transgender employees. Practical implications – Transphobia is so powerful that a substantial percentage of the students recommended courses of action that they believed to be illegal even though the study was designed to discourage a hostile response. Employers that are concerned about transgender rights will need to do a lot more than just grafting the word “transgender” onto their extant set of policies. Social implications – Since today's business students are tomorrow's business leaders, the authors could eventually make the business world more tolerant if the authors could identify a message that resonates with the students and causes them to re-evaluate their homophobia and transphobia. Originality/value – Empirical studies of transgender issues have been dominated by the qualitative approach, so there is a need for more quantitative research on this topic. The hostile responses usually indicated greater acceptance of transgender employees who have completed gender reassignment surgery. This seems difficult to reconcile with a conception of transphobia as a generalized distaste towards all those who transgress gender norms.

Transforming Attitudes About Transgender Employee Rights

“…Hostility, compliance, and inclusion represent three of the organizational responses to sexual minorities according to Rocco, Landorf, and Delgado (2009) and they correspond to denial, acceptance, and integration within Bennett's (1986) six stages of diversity awareness. A fuller discussion of the relationship between transgender theory and organizational responses to sexual minorities can be found in Rudin, Ruane, Ross, Farro, and Billing (2014), an article that analyzes the Fall 2012 (preintervention) data.…”

Trans Women and Public Restrooms: The Legal Discourse and Its Violence

“…18 On the other hand, other arguments against the access of trans women to women's restrooms are not justified by the appeal for safety, but rather by the basic belief that trans women are men and therefore could not use the women's bathroom (Wilson, 2016(Wilson, , p. 1400. A survey by Rudin et al (2014) revealed that a significant number of participants understand that access to bathrooms for transgender people according to gender identity must be conditioned to the performance of sexual reassignment surgery, which implies the naturalization of public policies of invasive disciplinatory action of the corporeity of the population. 19 The assumption that women's privacy in women's restrooms is guaranteed by the exclusion of men or people assigned with the male gender at birth is based on the assumption that only men or people assigned with the male gender at birth would be interested in invading that privacy (Levi and Redman, 2010, p. 163).…”

“…Bathrooms segregated by gender implicitly shows that there are only two possible forms of gender expression and, therefore, restrict public acceptance of transgender individuals who defy social norms (Rudin et al, 2014 , p. 724). On the other hand, the heightened and recent debate on the use of restrooms by transgender people is also seen with surprise, considering that transgender people have already used public bathrooms for countless years without other people noticing them.…”

“… 18 On the other hand, other arguments against the access of trans women to women's restrooms are not justified by the appeal for safety, but rather by the basic belief that trans women are men and therefore could not use the women's bathroom (Wilson, 2016 , p. 1400). A survey by Rudin et al ( 2014 ) revealed that a significant number of participants understand that access to bathrooms for transgender people according to gender identity must be conditioned to the performance of sexual reassignment surgery, which implies the naturalization of public policies of invasive disciplinatory action of the corporeity of the population. …”

When Transgender Employees Come Out: Perceived Support and Cultural Change in the Transition Process

“…Some of Brewster, Velez, Mennicke, & Tebbe's (2014) respondents reported that where work environments required specific gender presentations such as uniforms or gendered spaces such as restrooms, transitions were more challenging. Restroom segregation creates a gender barrier by implicitly embedding the cultural norm of binary genders into businesses creating a challenge to co-workers acceptance of transgender individuals (Rudin, et al, 2014). Furthermore, cisgender males may be more likely to be concerned with restroom segregation.…”